


Still Staring at the Same Old Sky

by sinnerforhire



Series: Tornado 'verse [1]
Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Amputation, Car Accidents, Disabled Character, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Minor Character Death, Panic Attack, Physical Disability, Storm Chasing, Tornado Chasers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-17
Updated: 2010-08-17
Packaged: 2017-11-18 14:38:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 39,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/562141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinnerforhire/pseuds/sinnerforhire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In 1999, art student Jensen Ackles lost his right leg and his first love to one of the deadliest tornadoes in history. Ten years later, he's managing his uncle's auto shop and chasing storms on the side, and living in a house decorated with beautiful photographs and murals that no one will ever see. An old friend convinces him to allow anxious grad student Jared Padalecki into his life to observe a real storm chaser in action. Soon Jared turns Jensen's monotonous life upside down, awakening long-buried feelings and traumas. The two become romantically involved, but a freak accident threatens their newfound love...and Jensen's life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic began its life in May 2008, when I started the research for what was at that time a SPN AU. Two years and approximately 11 drafts later, it's finally complete. If you'd like more information about storm chasing or storm spotting, PM me and I can provide you some website links and/or names of books that I found helpful. The meteorological details in this fic are as accurate as I could make them as someone who's never taken a meteorology course.

 

Before Jensen even touches the doorknob, the door swings open. “Dump your shit, we gotta move.”

“Jesus Christ,” says Jensen, pushing past Chris and dropping his backpack on the floor next to the couch. He’s not in the mood for...well, anything, after the day he’s had. “What the fuck’s going on?”

“There’s some major action down around Fort Sill. If we leave right now we can probably intercept it.” Chris is practically bouncing up and down, he’s so excited.

Jensen rubs a hand over his face. It’s the first day of finals, for fuck’s sake. “Dude, I just got ass-raped in my chem final. All I wanna do is have a couple dozen beers and play _Half-Life_.”

“SPC’s gonna up it to high risk any minute,” Chris replies, eyes pleading. “CAPE’s up to 5000 and Purcell’s reporting a near- _perfect_ profile for tornadic supercells.” He holds up a sheaf of copy paper, already ragged at the edges. “We get days like this once, maybe twice a season. Trust me, you’ll never forgive yourself if you miss this. And neither will I.”

Jensen sighs and takes the reports from Chris’s hand and looks them over. Chris is right--conditions are ripe for some pretty wild action. Jensen doesn’t want to ruin their last few days on campus together, and he could pass tomorrow’s photography final in his sleep. “Fine. But you’re buying the first two rounds.”

Chris’s face lights up. “Deal.” He grabs his leather jacket, which is hanging on a hook next to the door. “Move your ass, princess.”

They climb into Chris’s Accord and head toward the highway. In the southwestern sky the clouds are dark and streamlined into the characteristic anvil shape, though the sky above their heads is light and relatively calm. Chris flips on the FM radio. “Try and find a traffic report. I want to know what it’s like on the Bailey. We can avoid it if we have to.”

Jensen scans stations until he finds one. “Sounds like it’s moving okay.” He turns on the ham radio and tunes into SKYWARN to listen to the spotters’ reports. They’re reporting a large area of rotation just northeast of Lawton, and in Altus, a strong updraft with heavy rain and hail. He flips through the data sheets Chris printed out and frowns--the last satellite images don’t show the Lawton supercell. “That one over Lawton just blew up out of nowhere.”

“Are you seeing this?” Chris points to the mesocyclone at the edge of the visible sky. The rotation is tough to see from this distance, but the density and texture of the cloud formation is a good indicator of the storm’s power. It’s gonna be a monster--probably bigger and more powerful than any storm they’ve seen since they started chasing three years ago. Chris beams. “This is gorgeous. If this thing doesn’t drop at least one F3 or higher, drinks are on me for the next _month_.”

“Can I get that in writing?” replies Jensen, grinning. Chris reaches out and smacks his arm, but Jensen just laughs and grabs his hand.

“Tryin’ to drive here,” growls Chris, but he’s grinning too.

“Lighten up, man.” Jensen presses a quick kiss to the back of Chris’s hand, then releases it.

Chris rolls his eyes. “God, you’re so gay.”

“Says the guy who’s gonna suck my dick later,” retorts Jensen.

“Not if you keep talking like that, I’m not.” Chris smirks sideways at Jensen as he pulls up to the tollbooth. He takes a ticket and rolls up the window. “Time to rock and roll.”

As Chris pulls out onto the turnpike, Jensen pulls his prized camera out of its case. He earned the money for it himself by mowing lawns, which is a horrible job to do in Texas in the high summer. He retrieves the monopod from the outer pocket and mounts it to the base of the camera. It doesn’t always provide as much stability as he’d like, but it’s the best he can do right now. A spotter’s voice blares from the CB. “Tornado on the ground, 3 miles east of Apache. It’s pretty small now, single-vortex, but the funnel is widening...it’s moving north at about 30 miles an hour.”

“We’re getting golf-ball-sized hail 4 south of Anadarko,” another spotter announces a couple minutes later. “3 miles northwest of Cyril we’ve got a tornado on the ground, I repeat, tornado on the ground.”

Jensen tunes the FM radio to 101.9 and raises the volume. For a few minutes they just listen to Rick Mitchell’s broadcast and Jensen photographs the wall cloud that’s now visible low in the southeastern sky. Around them the wind is picking up as the storm creeps closer, and the sky to the northwest is taking on the characteristic pea-soup hue. Jensen stops shooting and concentrates on what the spotters are saying. “It’s moving fast,” he tells Chris. “They’re saying 30, 35 miles an hour, northeast.”

“Fuckin’ A.” Chris glances out Jensen’s window. “Aren’t you glad you didn’t wuss out?”

Jensen chuckles. “Yeah, ‘cause I couldn’t stand your bitching otherwise.”

“ _Tornado on the ground, 3 south of Roosevelt...this one’s pretty small, doesn’t look like it’ll last long...yeah, it just roped out. It’s no longer on the ground._ ”

“What’s that, three so far?” asks Chris.

“Yeah,” says Jensen absently as he photographs the lightning bolts that split the southwest sky. He stops to listen to Mitchell. “The other supercell split, one went north toward Pocasset and the other one’s heading into Cyril.”

“Tornado on the ground. 2 miles south of Anadarko, we’ve got a tornado on the ground,” announces a spotter.

“If we’re lucky, we’ll run into the one around Chickasha and we can just turn around and follow it,” says Chris. He leans forward and peers up at the oppressive black clouds. “Christ, look at that wall cloud. Fucker’s huge.”

“They’re saying it’ll hit Chickasha at quarter of six,” reports Jensen.

Chris glances at the clock. “Awesome. We should have plenty of time to get in position.” Even so, he presses harder on the accelerator. Jensen plots the storm’s progress on his mental map of the area and determines that the biggest storm is coming right up the Bailey into Oklahoma City. He swallows hard. _That’s not good_.

Mitchell’s voice commands Jensen’s attention. “The SPC has upped the outlook for this area to high risk.”

“ _Guys, we’re getting four-and-a-half-inch hail here between Altus and Blair..._ ”

Chris’s eyes widen. “Fuck, that’s softball-size!”

“ _Okay, there’s a tornado on the ground, half mile north of Highway 19, just west of Cyril. We’re getting debris...it’s over open country now, it’s just trees..._ ”

“Christ, that’s five now,” Jensen points out. “This is insane. They’re talking about cells forming around El Reno and Union City now, too.”

“ _Tornado’s still on the ground...it’s a definite cone shape, good organization...moving northeast at 30..._ ”

“I swear, that wall cloud’s getting lower,” says Chris.

Jensen twists around to see out the side of the windshield. “If it gets any lower we’re gonna be driving through it.” But Chris is right, the bottom of the wall cloud is so low that it’s obscured by the townscape. “How we doing on gas?”

“We’re fine. I filled up this morning when I saw the forecast.” Chris grins. “I wanted to be ready to roll out as soon as you got done with your final.”

Jensen groans. “Don’t remind me. Singer’s a fucking bastard.” Chris shakes his head and starts to say something, but Jensen holds up his hand to silence him so he can focus on the radio.

“ _Tornado on the ground! 3 northeast of Cement, we’ve got a multiple vortex tornado on the ground...there’s debris now...it’s big, at least a half-mile, maybe a little more...moving northeast at about 35...gettin’ power flashes now..._ ”

Jensen peers into the distance. He can just see the power flashes in the depths of the darkness, like fireflies in a forest. Buildings and trees still block their view of the bottom of the wall cloud and thus the tornado.

Chris squints into the inky darkness, hindered by the heavy rain pelting the windshield. “I think I see our exit.”

If Chris is right, they’re just in time. They’ll be able to U-turn and jump back on the Bailey and then they should be able to follow right alongside it.

Once they’re off the turnpike, Chris pulls into a shopping center so they can regroup. Now that they’ve stopped, the rain is light enough that their wipers can keep up. Jensen removes the finished roll of film and reloads.

“You think we should get back on the Bailey or go up 92 to 37 and over?” asks Chris as the film winds loudly.

“It’s right on 92, it sounds like, so the road’s probably blocked by now. We’re better off getting back on the Bailey, we should be able to parallel it pretty well.”

Chris nods. “All right.” He wastes no time getting them back on the turnpike.

“They put up a warning in Kingfisher,” Jensen announces.

“ _We’ve got another tornado on the ground, a satellite..._ ”

“Shit, look at that.” Chris points out his window. They can see the top of the big funnel that just passed Laverty. Jensen shifts around but can’t get a good picture of it before it dissipates.

A loud bang commands their attention. Jensen looks up to see a golf-ball-sized piece of hail bounce off the hood. “Holy fuck!”

“Fuckin’ hell,” grumbles Chris. Another piece of hail strikes the roof. “I hate hail.”

Jensen looks out Chris’s window. The wall cloud is still rotating like crazy, but from their current vantage point they can’t see whether or not the tornado is still on the ground. As Jensen adjusts the shutter speed, they clear the trees and the thick cylinder comes into view.

Chris looks up and grins. “Look at that baby. Ain't she a beaut?”

This is what they live for, seeing the raw power and fearsome grace of nature’s fury up close. The tornado looms over the defenseless landscape, black like the maw of a giant beast and just as dangerous. Debris swirls around the base of the funnel like smoke around a cigar. “I think it’s clipping the edge of town,” says Jensen, frowning. “There’s a bunch of debris.” He zooms the lens to its maximum and photographs the ephemeral cloud of debris. “It just crossed 81. Sounds like it hit the airport, they say there’s a huge amount of damage to the buildings there.”

“Shit,” Chris says offhandedly, completely enraptured by the tornado.

The radio catches Jensen’s attention as he zooms out. “DOW’s measuring the wind speeds at over 300 miles an hour. Jesus Christ.”

The destructive cylinder has now widened into a wedge at least half a mile wide. Bright flashes indicate the breaking of power lines as the tornado devours them. Jensen tries his hardest to catch them on film, but the split-second timing is tough. “This is perfect,” says Chris. “We’re right alongside it.”

It’s then that Jensen notices how badly the car is shaking and how hard Chris is fighting to keep it on the road. “You think we should maybe pull over soon?”

Chris glares at him. “You’ve gotta be shitting me. Dude, this is a once in a lifetime shot! We’re not pussyin’ out.”

“Seriously, man, it’s like 90-mile-an-hour winds right here. And just because it’s on the other side of the road now doesn’t mean it’s gonna stay there.”

“Do your job,” orders Chris. “And let me do mine.”

There’s so much debris in the air now that it’s hard to determine how wide the tornado really is. It’s at least twice as big as it was just a couple minutes ago. The high winds pound the car’s outer body, making it almost impossible to hear the radio. It’s so dark Jensen can barely make out Chris’s features; he can hardly even see the massive tornado as it plows through the outer reaches of the metro area destroying everything in its path. Jensen snaps a panoramic shot just as a spotter confirms that the wedge tornado is a mile wide and it’s just decimated the town of Bridge Creek.

“Chris?” Jensen calls over the din. “I think we shou--”

There’s a piercing screech and a deafening crash; the whole world tilts violently to the right and disappears into the darkness.

Jared stands outside Professor Collins's office and tries to work up the courage to knock on the door. He wipes his sweat-slick palms on his jeans and raises a hand, then drops it again. Dread climbs up his throat, making it hard to breathe. He's never in his entire life been summoned to an educator's office, and he could have quite happily lived without ever knowing the feeling.

He raises his hand again, swallows hard, and raps his knuckles against the door. He doesn't realize the door is slightly ajar until his touch makes it swing open far enough for Collins to notice him.

Collins gives him a small, perfunctory smile. "Hi, Jared. Come on in; have a seat."

Jared takes a deep breath and folds himself into the only available seat, a canvas lawn chair barely large enough to contain his oversized frame. "You, uh...wanted to see me?"

Collins nods and pulls a manila folder from a stack on the side of his cluttered desk. "We need to talk about your application to the Master's program."

Jared sits up as straight as he can in the wobbly chair. "Did I forget something? I went over the checklist a million times and I thought I had everything but I--"

Collins holds up a hand. "The application itself was fine. Your grades are what we need to discuss."

"What about my grades?"

The professor removes a piece of paper from the folder and sets it in front of Jared. The lowest grade on the report is circled in red pen. "The Master's program requires a minimum 3.5 average in the major. I'm afraid the C-minus in Anthro 223 leaves your average just shy of 3.5."

Jared's stomach clenches and the edges of his vision gray out until his whole world is reduced to that red circle. There has to be some mistake. This can't be it. He can't get shipped home over one bad grade that wasn't actually his fault. He can't go back now, he just _can't_. He can't go crawling back home, tail between his legs, and admit that they were right about him, about everything. He'd rather be homeless and beg on the streets than go back to _them_. Just thinking about it makes his chest tighten until he feels like he's breathing wet cement instead of air. He can hear the blood rushing in his ears, but it sounds faraway, like waves lapping on a distant shore.

"Jared!" Suddenly, Professor Collins is next to him instead of behind his desk where he belongs, and Jared vaguely registers the weight of Collins's hand on his shoulder. "Are you all right? Should I call someone?"

"No," he gasps. "Just...gimme a sec." Jared closes his eyes and does the breathing exercise the counselor taught him and manages to get himself relatively under control. "I'm okay, I'm good."

Collins looks doubtful, but he goes back behind his desk. "Is it okay if I continue?"

Jared swallows hard and nods. Professor Collins gives him an encouraging smile. "I have a--proposal, of sorts, if you'd like to hear it."

"Sure," says Jared, figuring he has nothing to lose at this point.

"Your low grade was in Intro to Ethnography, correct?" Jared nods. "Well, I'm willing to give you a chance to prove that you know the material better than your grade would indicate."

"How?" Jared straightens and makes eye contact with the professor for the first time in several minutes.

"I've created an assignment for you to do during the May term," answers Collins. "If you complete it to my satisfaction, I will give you the grade you need to pull your average up to an acceptable level. I will also personally recommend you to the selection committee."

Jared's eyes widen. Professor Collins is practically a rock star in the Anthropology department. A recommendation from him would pretty much guarantee Jared a place in the Master's program. "What's the assignment?"

"I want you to write an ethnography about storm chasing."

"You mean tornado chasing, like in _Twister_?" Jared's voice rises with excitement.

Collins chuckles. "Real storm chasers are much more conscientious and restrained than the Hollywood version, but yes. I have a friend in Oklahoma who's been involved in storm chasing for several years. I'd like you to spend a month in the field with him and write me a journal-length article based on your research." He closes the folder and hands it to Jared. "In here are the forms you'll need to apply for funding and to arrange travel through the University's travel agent. I will take care of registering you for course credit."

"Thank you so much." Jared clutches the folder to his chest. "I really, really appreciate this. I mean it."

Collins smiles. "Good luck, Jared."

Jared stands up and grins. "Thanks. This is--this means a lot to me." As soon as the words are out of his mouth, he cringes. _Way to sound like you have a crush on him, moron_ , he thinks.

"I have faith in you," replies the professor.

Jared blushes and stumbles out the door.

When Jared's alarm goes off at 2:30 he tries to hit the snooze button, but as he rolls over and reaches for the alarm clock, his sleep-heavy arm misses its mark and the clock falls to the floor with a crash. If that weren't bad enough, the alarm starts to shriek at top volume. Still not fully conscious despite the cacophony, he fumbles with the offending hunk of plastic long enough that his roommate Chad bangs on the wall separating their bedrooms and screams unintelligible profanities. Finally, Jared yanks the power cord out of the wall in frustration and the dark room plunges into blessed silence.

Jared tosses the clock aside and rubs a hand over his gritty eyes. Why the hell did he think a six a.m. flight was a good idea? He's gonna need some serious caffeine to keep himself awake through the boring two-hour drive from State College to the airport in Harrisburg.

On his way out of town, he stops at a convenience store and buys an extra-large energy drink. He finishes it before he even hits the Juniata River. By the time he pulls into the long-term parking lot at the airport, his hands shake so badly that he has trouble taking the key out of the ignition. Okay, maybe he overdid it a little.

Also, he's never been on a plane before. All his family vacations were road trips and his school trips were always on buses. He bought his truck on his seventeenth birthday and drove all the way from San Antonio to Pennsylvania in two and a half days, so eager he was to get the hell away from home. He has no idea what to expect at the airport, since it's way too small to resemble the airports he's seen in movies. He read the TSA website, so he knows what to do at the security checkpoint, but after that he's on his own.

The airport is deserted at this time of morning, so he gets through the checkpoint in less than five minutes. On his way to the lounge at Gate B2 he picks up a bottle of Powerade and a couple donuts at a snack bar. Not a single other person is in the lounge when he arrives, so he sits his stuff in a chair and stretches out on the bench across from it. He pages through _The Ethnographic Interview_ for a while, but he doesn't really absorb any of the information.

When the plane starts boarding nearly an hour later, he's in for a rude shock when the airplane turns out to be a quarter of the size of the one's he's seen on TV and movies. He has to duck and bend his knees halfway to fit through the damn door and the aisle is barely big enough to fit him and his bag, so he's constantly trying to keep the bag from hitting people in the face as he makes his way to the back of the tiny jet. As he's stuffing his laptop bag and carry-on suitcase in the overhead compartment two seats behind his, he feels a tug on the back of his shirt. He turns to see a short red-haired girl about his own age smiling sheepishly. "Hey, could you help me with my stuff?" she asks, holding up a pink messenger bag and gesturing at the shelf she can't reach.

He smiles. "Sure, no problem." He takes the bag, which is a lot heavier than it looks--she's probably carrying a laptop as well--and maneuvers it into place in the compartment.

She blushes slightly and gives him a relieved grin. "Thanks so much. I'll probably need you to get it down when we land, if that's not too much trouble."

"It's no trouble," he assures her.

"I hate being short," she grumbles, more to herself than Jared. She slides her purse under the seat in front of her and sits down.

Jared moves back to his own row and tries to figure out how the hell to fold himself into the his aisle seat. The amount of contortion it takes to fit his legs into the tiny space between his seat and the back of the seat in front of him is ridiculous. His knees and hips start to ache before the plane's engine even fires up. He tries to twist sideways so as not to touch the middle-aged woman sitting next to him, which makes his shoulders and back pull painfully. By the time the plane takes off, he's so uncomfortable he wants to scream.

Two agonizing hours later, the plane lands at O'Hare, where he'll have an hour and a half layover before he makes his connection to Oklahoma City. When he unfolds himself to rise from the seat, both his knees crack audibly, netting him weird looks from the women across the aisle. He stretches out his arms as much as the narrow space will allow and steps out into the aisle. He goes to rescue the short girl's bag first and her eyes light up when he stiffly hands it to her. "Hey, thanks," she says. She looks him up and down and gives him a sympathetic smile. "Man, I didn't even have enough legroom in that seat. It must have really sucked for you."

"Yeah, pretty much," he replies, rubbing his shoulder.

She retrieves her purse from the floor and digs around in it. "Hold out your hand." When he does, she places two small pink pills in it. "Darvocet. My mom takes it for her arthritis. It's stronger than Tylenol but not as strong as Vicodin."

It's a little unsettling, taking pills from a stranger, but the girl seems earnest enough. "It won't get you stoned, if that's what you're worried about," she goes on. "You might get a little sleepy, but that's it."

At this point, he's having a hard time working up the energy to be apprehensive, so he just nods and shoots her a weak smile. "Thanks."

She grins sweetly. "No problem. Now we're even."

He dry-swallows the pills and grabs his own bags from the overhead. It's nearly ten minutes before the aisle empties and he can make his way to the front of the plane. He lets out a huge sigh of relief when he steps onto the jetway.

Luckily, it doesn't take long to find the gate for his next flight. He buys a soft pretzel and a soda from a vendor and sequesters himself in a corner of the lounge where he can stretch out across four seats. He envies the couples flying together who don't have to drag their bags everywhere with them all the time and catch a nap between flights with no risk of missing the boarding call.  
When he goes to board the next plane, the agent informs him that he'll have to check his bag. "Why?"

"Because it won't fit in the overhead," she replies tersely. "The attendant will put a green tag on your bag and you can pick it up as you deboard at your destination." She scans his boarding pass. "Next!"

"Okay then," he mutters. He winds his way down the jetway until it cuts off at a flight of steps. Now he's confused. He glances around, but no one else looks bothered, so he goes down the steps to the tarmac.

Sure enough, the attendant repeats what the desk agent told him and wraps a big green tag around the handle of his bag. He looks up at the plane, which isn't even close to the size of the one he flew in on. This one looks like it can barely hold 30 people. He groans. It's only an hour and fifteen minute flight to Oklahoma City, but that's still an hour and ten minutes too long to be cooped up in one of those tiny seats.

He nearly smacks his head on the ceiling when he steps inside the little plane. Surprisingly, the seats aren't as close together as the ones in the jet, although they still don't have nearly enough legroom for him to fit comfortably. He finds his assigned seat, which is all alone on the left side of the plane, and puts his laptop bag in the overhead. At least he won't have to twist his arms into a pretzel this time, though his knees are still jammed into the back of the seat in front of him. He dozes off as the other passengers take their seats and barely pays attention to the attendant's prepared speech.

Next thing he knows, something's shaking his arm. He blinks awake and slowly the man across the aisle from his comes into focus. "We're taxiing in," he says. "Shouldn't be more than five minutes."  
"Thanks," Jared replies. He's not nearly as anxious to get out this time, but he's definitely ready to be done with this flying thing.

He finds his tagged suitcase on the tarmac and drags it up the steps to the jetway. When he gets to the lounge, it takes him longer than it probably should to notice the petite blonde girl holding a sign with his name on it. He wanders over to her and points to the sign. "Uh, that's me."

Her face lights up. "Oh! Hi. I'm Alona, your ride. Guess you need to grab your bags still, huh?"

"Yeah," he says, and only then does he remember that his informant is supposed to be picking him up. He frowns. "Wait, who are you?"

She grins. "Sorry about the last-minute change of plans, but Jensen's a little...under the weather this morning."

 _That makes two of us_ , he thinks. "Is he okay?"

"Oh, yeah, he's fine--just not really a morning person, you know?" She looks down at the floor as she says it, and he gets the feeling there's something she's not telling him. "Anyway, I work with him and he asked me to pick you up. I'm not scary, I promise. I'm a grad student at OU, in psych."

"That's cool." Jared follows her to the escalator, hoping that she knows where she's going because he doesn't have a clue.

As he steps onto the belt behind her, she turns back and tosses her long hair over her shoulder. "I know he told me what school you're from, but I've completely forgotten."

"Penn State." He stumbles a little getting off the escalator, but he manages to right himself before he falls on his face. He has to hurry to catch up with Alona, who leads him straight to the baggage carousels.

It takes him three passes to catch his suitcase and duffel, and after a couple minutes of fumbling with his carry-ons Alona seizes the strap of his laptop bag. "Here, I'll take that," she announces. She hoists the bag onto her shoulder and reaches for his other carry-on. "And this. You just worry about those two," she says, pointing to his largest suitcase and duffel.

Alona leads him through the parking lot to a rusty blue Buick that's at least as old as she is. "This is Buster," she tells him with a grin. "He's not the prettiest, but he gets the job done." She opens the truck and helps Jared place his luggage between a plastic snow shovel and a trombone case. As she unlocks the driver's door, she frowns. "He's got a bench seat in the front, so I don't think you're going to fit. Hope you don't mind sitting in the back."

Jared winces. Alona's about five foot four, so there's no way in hell he's gonna ride with his knees jammed into the glove box if he doesn't have to. "That's fine," he assures her.

She unlocks the door by hand and he climbs in, dodging a box of tissues, a snow brush, and a Super Soaker. The lap belt dangles over the seat, stretched to its full length and frayed at the edges; when he fastens it, it's too loose. He sends up a quick prayer that it won't matter.

Alona starts the car and the Dixie Chicks blare from a stereo that looks to be recently installed. "Sorry, sorry," she says as she fiddles with the volume buttons.

"How far away is...uh--" He totally forgets the name of the town where Jensen lives. It's about 20 miles south of Norman, where the hotel he's staying in is located.

"Purcell's about forty-five minutes on the highway," Alona replies as she pulls out of the parking lot "Not much traffic this time of day."

"Yeah, I guess not." He looks down at his watch and realizes that he hasn't set it back yet, so he turns the dial backwards as Alona merges onto the highway. Then he hears a high-pitched squeaking sound, audible even over the music and wind noise. "What's that sound?" he asks. "Doesn't sound good."

"Fan belt," she replies. "Jensen ordered it on Friday, so it should get here by Wednesday."

"Jensen fixes your car?"

She raises an eyebrow at him in the mirror. "He didn't tell you where he works?"

"No," says Jared. "His emails were about three sentences long."

"Sounds like him, alright." She swings the car into the left lane to pass a poultry truck. "Jensen's uncle Jeff owns a garage. Jensen's the office manager and I'm the receptionist."

"So he's your boss?"

She snorts. "He wishes! No, Jeff's everybody's boss. And believe me, we know it." She eases the Buick back into the right lane. "But I swear, he can work miracles with a box wrench. And now, thanks to Jensen, we've got a contract with OU to maintain their chase vehicles."

Alona turns her attention to the stereo and the conversation lulls. Jared gazes out the window at the gentle swells of prairie crisscrossed by worn asphalt roads and endless electric lines running between swaths of tract housing and strip malls, broken only by the occasional oasis of gold-tasseled corn or grazing cattle herd bravely resisting the twenty-first century juggernaut of mechanized mass production. The cloudless sky stretching above their heads seems so much bigger here without mountains to obstruct the horizon. Way off in the distance he can see the vivid blue give way to mottled green.

Alona turns off the highway onto a two-lane road that's clearly seen--and felt--better days. A few minutes later, a faded wooden sign comes into view announcing that "Rotary International Welcomes You to Purcell. Enjoy Your Stay."

The town itself doesn't look much different from the rural towns in central Pennsylvania: municipal buildings with chipped concrete columns clustered around a central square framed with American flags; a few run-down storefronts on the main drag; a mom 'n pop grocery store on the corner; a battered newsstand, bar, and laundromat that haven't changed their signs since the '50s; and a "revitalized" downtown area with a coffee shop, antique store, brownstone four-star restaurant, and a flower shop with a garish green-and-pink awning.

Just past the post office, Alona pulls into a parking lot. "Well, we're here," she chirps. JDM Auto Repair is a small garage with only one bay door on the far side of the building. Alona parks in the corner, passing by several vehicles on the way, none of which appear to be less than five years old. Alona's clunker seems to be older than all of them.

"I have no idea what Jensen's planning to do with you, so you can just leave your stuff in here till you need it," says Alona as she reaches back to lock his door.

"Mind if I grab my laptop bag?"

"Sure, go ahead." She unlocks the trunk for him and he retrieves the bag, which seems so much lighter now that he's had a break from carrying it. "Got everything?"

"Yeah, I'm good," he answers. She closes the trunk, but the lid bounces right back up. She pulls a small metal rod out of the trunk and pokes at the latch for a bit, then tries again. This time it locks.

He follows her to the front door, which she has to unlock, and he reaches for the handle to open it for her. She bats his hand away. "I'm a big girl, I can open my own doors," she tells him, not unkindly.

Alona turns on the lights in the lobby, which matches Jared's overall impression of the place. An ugly plaid couch and two mismatched easy chairs sit around a scratched and dented coffee table piled with out-of-date issues of _Sports Illustrated_ and _Car and Driver_ , and the reception desk on the opposite wall is cluttered with loose papers and various office supplies. "Doesn't look like much, I know," she says.

"No, it's nice," Jared lies. "Very...homey."

Alona laughs. "Well, all the furniture came out of Jeff and Sam's house, so it should be." She shakes her head. "I think that couch is older than me. It might even be older than Jensen."

Jared sets his bag on the couch. "So, uh, now what?"

Alona walks over to the reception desk and knocks on a half-hidden door behind it. After a few seconds, she frowns and knocks harder. "Huh. I guess Jensen isn't here yet." She tosses her hair and smiles at Jared in apology. "Let me talk to Jeff and see if he knows anything."

Jared sits down on the couch and takes his notebook out of his bag. He writes down his impressions of the town, the garage, and Alona.

Alona comes back a couple of minutes later. "Jeff said Jensen'll be in around ten. I guess you can just kinda hang out here till then."

"Okay." He takes _The Ethnographic Interview_ out of his bag again and tries to actually concentrate on the material this time.

He's about to start chapter four when a bell rings and he looks up to see the door swing open by itself. A few seconds later, a man missing the majority of his right leg enters the lobby using forearm crutches. He's wearing big aviator sunglasses, but Jared can see enough of his face and hair to tell that he's only a few years old than Alona.

"Hey, you," she says, smiling fondly at the new arrival. "How you holding up?"

"I'm here, aren't I?" the man replies in a husky voice. He pulls off the sunglasses to reveal bloodshot green eyes with dark half-moon shadows underneath. Even the sour grimace on his face can't hide how attractive he is. As it is, he looks like he could star in a _Brokeback Mountain_ sequel--he radiates rugged strength but possesses delicate, almost feminine features. The juxtaposition is striking and the injury only enhances the effect. Even on crutches he moves with a confidence and grace that Jared envies.

Alona stands up. "I think I've got something of yours." She gestures to Jared. "Jensen, this is Jared."

"Wow, you're Jensen?" Jared hurries forward and offers a hand.

Jensen's expression twists into something hard and cold. "Nice to meet you," he says, the words clipped and gruff. He grips Jared's hand and nearly crushes it; Jared swears he can feel the bones grinding together. Just when he thinks Jensen might have actually broken something, Jensen lets go.

"You too," Jared croaks. This is not going the way he planned and he has no idea what Jensen's problem is.

Jensen crutches past the desk and opens the door behind it. "You coming?" he asks, glaring over his shoulder at Jared.

Jared scrambles to gather up his stuff. "Sorry, yeah," he mumbles as he shoves his book back in his bag. He hurries into Jensen's office to find him already seated at his desk, crutches tucked neatly into a corner. He takes a seat in the battered wooden chair beside the door, which is nowhere near tall enough for him. His knees protest at being forced into another uncomfortable position. Whatever that girl gave him on the plane has pretty much worn off, leaving him stiff and sore and really not in the mood to deal with Jensen's asshole behavior. "Should I close the door?" he asks, just to break the tension.

"Leave it," replies Jensen without looking up. He's staring so intensely at his computer screen that Jared half expects it to burst into flames.

Jared twists his shirttail around his finger until he can't stand the awkward silence. "Look, I, uh...if I did something wrong, I'm sorry." Jensen's eyes flick in his direction for a couple seconds, but his expression doesn't change. "It's just--I've been up since 2:30 this morning and flying coach was pretty much the worst experience ever and...God, I sound like an idiot and I'm gonna shut up now. Just, uh, forget I said anything." Jensen's only acknowledgement is a nod and a low grunt.

Jared swallows hard and tries to think of something, anything, he can say or do to make Jensen respond to him. He can't figure out why Jensen is being so hostile. He fidgets with the last button on his shirt as he works up the courage to speak again.

"Um, Jensen?"

"Yeah?" Jensen keeps typing.

"Is there anything you, uh, want me to do?"

"You can shut up and lemme work," grumbles Jensen. "I gotta finish this before lunch."

Jared nods, feeling about two inches tall. "Okay," he whispers. He pulls a book out of his bag without looking at it and flips through it idly, sneaking a glance at Jensen every few seconds.

"Red alert!" calls Alona. Jared starts so badly he nearly falls off the chair.

"Thanks," Jensen shouts back. He turns to Jared. "Slide over."

Jared does as he's told just in time to avoid the door when it flies inward and crashes against the wall behind him. A dark-haired man in grease-stained blue coveralls charges into the office. "What the hell happened to that order from APW that was supposed to come in on Friday?"

Jensen, for his part, seems completely unfazed. "Gimme a second, I have to find the tracking number." The man fumes as Jensen clicks the mouse. "Doesn't look like it's hit the distribution center yet. Either they sent it late or FedEx is running behind. It's in transit, so there's nothing we can do about it now."

"Dammit." The man turns and Jared freezes as the furious brown eyes glare daggers at _him_. "Who the hell are you?"

Jared's breath hitches. Before he can put together a reply, Jensen speaks up. "He's that kid that's studying me, remember? I told you about it last weekend."

"Well, keep outta the way." The man turns and storms out the door.

"Don't mind him," says Jensen. "He's always like that."

"Who was that?"

"Jeff Morgan. My uncle." A hint of a smirk appears on Jensen's face. "He's better with cars than people."

"I hope so," Jared blurts out before he can stop himself.

Jensen's face darkens. "He's doin' the best he can. He's a good guy. Takes care of his own."

"Yeah, of course...I didn't mean--" Jared runs a hand through his hair and bites his lip. Why does Jensen have to take every single thing he says the wrong way?

Jensen doesn't say anything, just goes back to his computer and starts clicking the mouse. For a long moment, all Jared hears is the tapping of keys and his own breaths. Finally, Jensen speaks again. "My aunt wants me to bring you over for dinner tonight."

Jared can't tell if Jensen is making a suggestion or giving him a warning. "That sounds good," he replies with caution. "I haven't had a home-cooked meal in four years."

"She'll love you, then," says Jensen, his tone implying that she's the only one who will.

It's going to be a long month.

Jensen's aunt and uncle live on the south side of town. Their neighborhood looks a lot like the one Jared grew up in, with neatly trimmed lawns, pristine wooden fences, and kids' bikes parked under driveway basketball hoops. Jensen parks his black Explorer behind an aging red pickup. "Here we are."

Jared follows him through the cluttered garage and tries to open the door for Jensen. Jensen smacks his hand away and growls an expletive that Jared was clearly meant to hear.

The door opens into the kitchen, where Jensen's aunt is standing in front of the stove, her back to the two of them. Jensen pokes her with the tip of his crutch and laughs when she squawks and spins around. The genuine warmth of Jensen's smile contrasts sharply with the miserable jerk Jared's had to put up with all day.

"You little--" Jensen's aunt stops short when her eyes land on Jared. "Is that any way to behave in front of company?" she admonishes Jensen. She smiles sweetly at Jared. "You must be Jared. I'm Jensen's crazy aunt Sam."

Jared can't help but smile back. "Nice to meet you, ma'am."

Sam chuckles. "I am nowhere near old enough to be called 'ma'am.' Just Sam is fine."

"Okay," Jared agrees. She's a refreshing change from tight-lipped, humorless Jensen.

"Dinner's almost ready," she says, moving back to the stove. "You boys mind setting the table?"

"Sure," answers Jensen. He points at one of the cabinets. "Plates are up there. Get four out."

Jared retrieves the plates and nearly bumps into Jensen, who's digging knives and forks out of a drawer. He reaches for the handful of silverware Jensen has already piled on the counter, but Jensen grabs it first. "I'll get that," Jared tells him.

"Got it, thanks," Jensen replies in a low voice.

Jared furrows his brow. "But you can't--"

Jensen seizes a mesh bag and shoves the silverware in it with one hand and smacks a crutch on the cupboard door with the other. "I'm crippled, not stupid."

"Jensen!" Sam barks.

"I'm sorry," Jared sputters, backing away until he hits the edge of the counter. "I just--I didn't mean--"

"He knows that," says Sam as she glares death at Jensen. "And he's going to apologize, right now."

"Yeah, whatever," Jensen mutters, thumping his crutches loudly as he pushes past her to the table.

Jared waits a few seconds before joining Jared at the table. He traps Jensen between the table and the wall and speaks too softly for Sam to overhear. "Look, I just wasn't thinking, okay? This is all kinda new to me. I didn't mean to insult you." Jensen clenches his jaw, keeping his eyes firmly glued to the placemat. "Could you please just give me a break here?"

Jensen pulls a fork and knife out of his bag. At the same time, Jared reaches forward and sets the last plate down, accidentally brushing Jensen's hand. Jensen's head jerks up and for just a second, Jared sees something in his eyes that isn't anger or annoyance.

Then Jeff walks in, thoroughly breaking the spell. "Smells good, Mama. How much longer?"

Jared stares, astonished, as Jeff crosses the kitchen and clasps his arms around Sam's shoulders. She kisses him on the cheek and hip-checks him so she can open the oven door. "About five more minutes," she replies, pulling a tray of golden crescent rolls from the rack.

Jeff disentangles himself from his wife and moves to the table. "I didn't catch your name earlier," he says casually, as though he didn't try to bite Jared's head off a few hours ago.

"It's Jared." Jared shakes the hand Jeff offers. "Jared Padalecki, from Penn State."

"Good to meet you." Jeff turns his attention to Jensen. "Are you two hitting the road tomorrow?"

Jensen shakes his head. "No. Goddamn high pressure system's stalled right over us. There probably won't be anything to see till Thursday or Friday."

A digital timer shrieks, which startles Jared so badly he bumps into the table and sets the silverware rattling. Jensen briefly glares at him.

"Honey, can you come get the green beans?" Sam calls once silence is blessedly restored.

Jeff rolls his eyes, but he's smiling. "Duty calls."

"Is he always like this?" Jared whispers.

"At home, yeah," Jensen answers, fingering the edge of a napkin.

"Is that why you don't get upset when he yells at you?"

Jensen shrugs. "I don't really notice anymore."

Another times buzzes as Jeff sets a basket of rolls and a large bowl of green beans on the table. "You can sit here," murmurs Jensen before taking a seat across the table. Jared sits down, and soon Sam comes over with a covered casserole dish. She places it in the center of the table and takes the seat between himself and Jensen.

Jeff takes his seat at the head of the table and says a short prayer. Jared surreptitiously glances around the table and catches Jensen scowling and staring straight ahead while Jeff speaks. He resolves to put that observation in his notes later.

Sam starts passing dishes around and soon Jared's plate is piled full. Once everyone is served, she turns to Jared. "Jensen mentioned that you go to Penn State. Are you from Pennsylvania originally?"

Jared hastily swallows a bite of chicken. "No, I'm from San Antonio."

"I knew it!" crows Sam. "Those Yankee boys don't have manners like yours. Your momma did a good job on you."

Jared's stomach clenches. Yeah, she sure did--in more ways than one. He ducks his head to hide behind his hair until he can collect himself. "Thanks," he replies, fighting to keep the hurt out of his voice.

"What made you choose Penn State?" asks Jeff. "That's awful far from home."

Jared's fingers tighten around his fork. "I was ready for a change," he says, which isn't far from the truth. "Plus, they gave me a really good scholarship."

"And what exactly are you studying?" replies Sam.

"Anthropology." Jared pushes a few green beans around on his plate. He's getting tired of the interrogation, as well-meaning as it is. "Penn State's anthro department is one of the best in the country." He shoves a forkful of stuffing into his mouth before anyone can ask him another question.

Jensen speaks up then. "How was work?" he asks Sam.

"It would have been better if the PR interns at OU could actually do their jobs," she grouses. "I called them three times last week and I still haven't heard a thing, and I can't submit the article without confirmation from the college."

"Are you a journalist?" Jared asks, pleased to be on the other side of the exchange.

"Sure am." Sam smiles and takes a sip of her water. "I've got a full-time gig with the Norman daily and I freelance here and there." She turns to Jensen. "Which reminds me, Nancy Walden from the Historical Society asked me if you would be able to help them with their county fair exhibit."

"What do they need?"

"Mostly design. She's got some ideas, but she needs someone to work up the visuals."

Jensen nods but doesn't meet Sam's eyes. "I guess I could talk to her."

"I'll give you her office number," Sam replies. "She's only there Tuesday and Thursday mornings, though."

"Well, we're probably not gonna get out on the road till Thursday at the earliest," says Jensen, and Jared wonders if Jensen was ever planning to let him in on that information. "So I could call her tomorrow."

Sam smiles. "Great. Call me, let me know how it goes."

Jensen shrugs. "Sure," he mutters, eyes still glued to his chicken.

There's a long silence that feels awkward even to Jared, who has no idea what's going on. Finally, Jeff tells a funny story involving two of his mechanics, a stray cat, and a convertible, which cuts some of the tension in the air. Soon afterwards Sam starts collecting the dishes. "Do you need any help?" Jared asks her.

Sam grins. "Aren't you sweet! Thanks for offering, but I'm sure you want to go get settled in for the night--Jensen mentioned that you took an early flight."

Before Jared can respond, Jensen jumps in. "Yeah, I gotta run him up to Norman, and I'd like us to get on the road sooner than later."

"Of course," says Sam. "It was nice meeting you, Jared."

"Thanks for inviting me," replies Jared. "You're a wonderful cook."

"What a charmer you are," says Sam with a delighted grin. "You're welcome here any time. Don't be a stranger."

Jensen clears his throat. Jared turns to find him standing at the door. Who knew it was possible to be stealthy with crutches? "I'll keep that in mind," Jared promises, then hurries to Jensen's side.

As Jensen drives him to the hotel, Jared makes one last-ditch effort to win Jensen over. "I think it's cool that you're so close to your aunt and uncle. They seemed really nice."

"Yeah." Jensen pulls onto the highway.

"You, uh, have any other family in the area?"

"No," he answers flatly. Jensen turns on the radio--figures it'd be a country station--and cranks the volume so high that it drowns out the wind rushing through the open windows. Jared takes the hint and sinks back into his seat.

Jensen stops in front of the hotel's main entrance and pops open the cargo door without a word. Jared retrieves his luggage and lets the heavy door fall closed. Jared barely gets to the curb before Jensen revs the engine and peels out.

Jared checks in and drags his suitcases to his room. He unpacks fairly quickly and changes into sleep pants and a worn Nittany Lion t-shirt before he hooks up his laptop and sprawls out on the bed with it. He opens his notebook and frowns at the few meager notes in it. It only takes him three minutes to type them up. He slams the notebook shut and throws it on the floor.

 _Today was pretty much a disaster_ , he writes in his field journal. _Getting here sucked beyond words and it only got worse from there. Jensen was a complete jerk from the moment he walked in the door. I can't believe Professor Collins would call somebody like that a friend._

By the time Jared finishes writing up his experiences with Jensen at the office and then at dinner with Jeff and Sam, he's more depressed than ever. His entire future literally depends on Jensen, who, as far as Jared can tell, hates him for no reason at all. If he can't get Jensen to cooperate with him, he'll blow his only chance of getting into grad school. Could Professor Collins really be so cruel as to give Jared an impossible assignment and deliberately set him up to fail? Oh God, what if the whole department was in on it? What if they've been laughing behind his back the whole time, knowing that he'll never amount to anything?

And when did it get so hot in here?

Jared pulls at the neck of his shirt and struggles not to choke on the hot, heavy air clogging the room, which seems a lot smaller--and darker--than it did half an hour ago, and the iron band squeezing his chest isn't making it any easier to breathe. His stomach twists and he's horribly afraid he's going to throw up. He shoves his laptop toward the head of the bed and rolls on his side, away from it, which makes the walls tilt and spin. He squeezes his eyes shut and gropes around until his fingers sink into a pillow. He pulls it close and curls around it, forcing himself to focus only on the plush padding beneath his fingertips and the soft cotton against his skin. He tries the yoga thing Sandy taught him, relaxing his muscles one at a time from his toes up to his eyes.

Gradually the iron band loosens so he can breathe normally and the room returns to its normal size and temperature. He shuts off his laptop and crawls under the sheets, overcome with sudden exhaustion.

Jensen doesn't call for three days.

[Continue to Part Two](http://sinnerforhire.livejournal.com/402323.html)


	2. Chapter 2

 

Thursday morning, Jared awakens to the blaring of his phone on the nightstand next to his ear. "I'll be there in 45 minutes," Jensen says with no preamble. "Bring a jacket and hat if you got 'em, and whatever else you think you need."

"Yeah, okay," Jared mumbles, fighting back a yawn. He squints at the clock. It's not even eight a.m. yet.

"I'll wait for you out front." The line goes dead.

Jared groans. He was hoping that Jensen would mellow out in the intervening days, but apparently not. He drags himself out of bed and into the shower. He really wants to get something useful from Jensen today. If he doesn't--well, he's trying not to think about that.

He decides to travel relatively light, so he tucks his camera and digital voice recorder in his pocket, then grabs his notebook and the jacket Jensen suggested. He locks his laptop in the room safe and counts out some cash for food and incidentals.

True to his word, Jensen arrives exactly 45 minutes later. When Jared climbs in the passenger seat of the Explorer, the first thing he notices is all the equipment Jensen has set up. A GPS unit sits in the center of the dash, two electronic displays light up the console, a two-way radio is clipped to the vent nearest Jensen, and there's a video camera mounted to the dash on Jared's side. A folded tripod rests against Jared's seat and a large camera bag sits at his feet. Jensen must be planning a chase. Jared's stomach flutters a little at the prospect.

"Where are we going?" asks Jared, keeping his voice level so as not to broadcast his excitement.  
"Right now, breakfast," answers Jensen. He doesn't say another word until he pulls into the parking lot of a small diner. He drives right past the blue handicap spots and parks a few rows away from the door.

"Don't you want to park a little closer?" says Jared. He's careful to avoid phrasing the question in a way that might insult Jensen.

Jensen shrugs and pulls his crutches out from behind his seat. "Not really."

Jared glances up at the rearview mirror. There's no blue handicap tag on it. He jumps out of the truck and surreptitiously checks out the license plate as he moves to meet Jensen. There's no handicap logo on the plate either. Jared's not sure whether Jensen is incredibly well-adjusted or seriously in denial. Jensen shoulders a laptop bag and crutches across the pavement so fast that Jared has to jog a little to catch up.

The hostess shows them to a table in the back corner, where Jensen plugs his laptop into a convenient electrical outlet. "You come here a lot?" Jared guesses.

"Enough." Jensen opens his laptop. "You know anything about storms?"

"I read a couple of books," says Jared.

"You learn anything?"

"The most important ingredients for a thunderstorm are instability, moisture, lift, and shear; and most tornadoes are produced by supercell thunderstorms," Jared replies with a hint of pride.

Jensen raises an eyebrow. "You know the basics. That's good." He turns his laptop so Jared can see the screen, which shows a map of the Midwest with colored lines over certain parts of some states. "This is the SPC convective outlook for this afternoon." He points to western Oklahoma, which is circled by pink, red, and blue lines. "This area here has the best potential for severe storms. That's where we'll start."

Jared flips open his notebook and scribbles down what Jensen said. "So that's how you pick where to go?"

Jensen glares at him. "You think it's that easy?"

"No, I--that's not what I meant," stammers Jared. "I'm just trying to understand the process, that's all."

Jensen starts to speak, but he's interrupted by the arrival of their waitress, a pretty blonde who smiles at Jensen as she sets a pot of coffee in front of him. "The usual?"

"That'd be great," Jensen replies with a friendly smile of his own. Jared's throat tightens. Why can't Jensen look at him like that?

She turns her attention to Jared. "And for you?" Jared picks something randomly off the menu he didn't get a chance to really look at and hands it back to her.

Jensen turns back to the computer and pulls up another map, this one with different fill colors covering several areas in two states. "See here, those are both possible targets, but you can only go to one. You gotta narrow it down."

"How do you do that?"

"Mesoscale models," Jensen answers in a tone that seems to imply that Jared should know this already. He puts up a diagram that contains nine different maps of the region, each black with solid and dotted lines in different colors and a few small areas shaded in bright colors. "This is a nine-panel RUC surface model. The first thing you look at is the CAPE/CIN values. If there's no CAPE, there's no storm. If there's too much CIN, there's no storm."

"What do CAPE and CIN stand for?" asks Jared, writing furiously to keep up.

"Convective Available Potential Energy and Convective Inhibition," Jensen answers, sounding bored. "The best storms form when there's a whole lotta CAPE and a little CIN." He gestures to the upper panels. "You use these to figure out how the air's moving so you can predict where a storm'll form and how it'll move. You got your surface winds for shear, your air temps for lift, your dewpoints for moisture, and then your CAPE and CIN are your instability. Put those all together, you can figure out what your odds are for good storms."

"But what are you actually looking for?" Jared stares at the jumble of colors and lines.

Jensen sighs. "You don't know anything about meteorology, do you." It's not really a question.  
"No," Jared admits in a small voice. He's never felt so stupid.

"In meteorology, there are only two things you can know for sure," begins Jensen, but he's interrupted by the arrival of their food. He picks up a fork and continues. "You know what just happened--the past conditions, and you know what's happening now--the current conditions. So you look for other times where both sets of conditions were similar and find out what happened as a result, and that's what you base your forecast on."

Jared nods. "Okay, that makes sense."

Jensen eats a few bites of his sausage and taps on his keyboard. He tilts the screen toward Jared and points to a complicated set of charts and graphs. "This is the SPC sounding analysis for today. Down here--" He points to the lower right corner of the screen, labeled _SARS - Sounding Analogs_. "This system takes all the data from above and matches it to similar data in previous soundings, so you can easily look them up and check for patterns. And here--" He indicates a small box on the lower left of the screen. "These are parameters developed by the SPC to rate the potential for supercells that might drop significant hail or tornadoes."

Jared scribbles notes and tries to eat his pancakes with his other hand. It doesn't work terribly well. "What does SPC stand for?"

"Storm Prediction Center. It's part of the National Weather Service station in Norman." Jensen pours himself another cup of coffee.

"So how do all these charts and stuff tell you where to go?"

Jensen scowls. "This 'stuff' doesn't tell you anything. Meteorology is a science. Forecasting is an _art_." He pulls the laptop close and starts to work on something Jared can't see as he finishes eating.

_Condescending bastard_ , Jared writes at the bottom of the page. ' _Forecasting is an_ art.' _Get over yourself_. Jared sets his notebook aside and attacks his pancakes. They're nearly cold. The bacon isn't much warmer.

Jensen turns the laptop screen back around. "This is a forecasting program called SwiftWX. It lets you make custom maps with different sets of data." He taps a few keys and a map of the Midwest appears. "You can layer satellite and radar over your soundings so you can see how what's actually going on outside compares to the numbers."

Jared seizes his notebook. "So what happens when the images and the numbers are different?"

"That's where the art comes in," Jensen replies with a smirk. "You can pull as many numbers as you want, but if you can't square what's in the sky with your data, you're screwed. The numbers are more like guidelines. Once you get out there, your best forecast tools are your eyes and your brain."

"But how exactly do you pick where to go?" asks Jared, feeling lost. Every answer Jensen gives seems to stray further from what Jared actually needs to know.

Jensen heaves an exasperated sigh and rolls his eyes. "I can't explain it, okay? I look at the data and the conditions outside and then I just pick the target that feels right. Sometimes I get it wrong, but most of the time I end up where I need to be. Instinct, luck, whatever it is, it just works."

Jared writes Jensen's exact words in his notebook and sets it aside. They're getting nowhere, so Jared quits before the frustration and impatience make him say or do something he'll regret. The waitress sets the check on the table. "Where are you going today?"

"Fort Towson," Jensen answers. "Down by the state line."

She grins at Jensen. "Well, good luck."

Jared commits the place name to memory. "How long is the drive?"

"'Bout four hours, give or take." Jensen peers at the check. "We should get there around 12:30. One at the latest." He digs a few bills out of his wallet. "You owe ten bucks."

Jared reaches for his own wallet. "How much for the tip?"

"That's counting tip," Jensen answers. Jared hands over the cash and watches Jensen arrange the bills on the plastic tray to face the same direction and stack them in order from highest denomination to lowest. He catches the waitress's eye and hands her the tray. "Thanks, hon."

"My pleasure, handsome," she replies with a sweet smile.

Jensen winks at her and packs up his laptop. When he turns back to Jared, the annoyed scowl comes back. "Come on," he barks, pulling himself up from the chair with his crutches. Jared grabs his notebook and hurries after him. Jensen's out in the parking lot before Jared even makes it to the door. Jared can't help but wonder if Jensen's speed demon act is a show for his benefit.

The drive for about fifteen minutes before Jensen pulls into a gas station. "If you need the bathroom, now's the time. Next stop, Fort Towson."

Jared heeds Jensen's advice. As he emerges from the restroom, he sees Jensen yank the entrance door open and crutch through before it starts to close again, even though he could have easily waited a few seconds for the woman leaving the store to open it for him. _Denial, then_. Jensen passes Jared without so much as a glance as he enters the restroom.

Jared buys a package of Twizzlers, a bag of Sour Patch Kids, and a bottle of Mountain Dew for the road. When he turns around, he nearly runs into Jensen. "Sorry," Jared says immediately. "You want something? I can--"

"Move," snaps Jensen. He opens the cooler door behind Jared and picks up a bottle of Powerade. He bends over and places the bottle in a cupholder attached to one crutch. Jared raises an eyebrow. _That's ingenious_. He hangs back and watches as Jensen places a couple of beef sticks and a bag of trail mix in a black pouch attached to the other crutch.

Once they've both checked out at the register, Jared follows Jensen back to the truck. Jensen removes the cupholder and pouch from his crutches and moves to stow them in the console. "Those are pretty cool," Jared says. "Where'd you get them?"

Jensen doesn't look up. "My occupational therapist."

"What's that?" Jared scribbles a note in his book.

"They teach you how to do things for yourself when you're hurt," Jensen answers in a dull monotone.

"So you saw one when you lost your leg?"

Jensen clenches his jaw. "Yeah." He starts the truck and slams the gas pedal, throwing Jared against the back of his seat. Jared takes the hint and slides his notebook out of sight.  
Jensen turns the radio on and flips to a country station. Jared rolls his eyes. Figures. Luckily, Jensen keeps the volume low, so Jared tries to tune out the twangy warbling. He watches as the trappings of human civilization dwindle until endless sun-dappled swaths of Bermuda grass and alfalfa dominate the landscape, broken only by jagged lines of oak trees and the occasional pasture fence.

After about an hour, Jared pulls his voice recorder out of his pocket. "Would you mind answering a few questions for me?" he asks Jensen.

Jensen glances over at the recorder in Jared's palm and frowns. "You gonna tape me?"

"I, uh...yeah, I'd like to," replies Jared. "It's a lot easier than trying to write notes in a moving car."

Jensen seems to consider this for a few seconds. "Yeah, alright," he mutters.

Jared starts recording. "I just have some basic questions to start." He looks up at Jensen, who nods. "First, how old are you?"

"Thirty-one." Jared raises an eyebrow at that. It's not that he doesn't believe Jensen, but everything about him--the tense set of his jaw, the bleakness in his eyes, the way he carries himself--makes him seem so much older.

"Where were you born?"

"Richardson, Texas."

"When did you move to Oklahoma?"

Jensen stays silent for a long moment. "I moved in with Jeff and Sam when I was thirteen."

"Why?"

"None of your fucking business," snaps Jensen.

Jared flinches. Jensen stares straight ahead and grips the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turn white. "Um, okay," Jared murmurs. He tries to change the subject. "So, uh...how did you get into storm chasing?"

"My roommate, in college." Jensen glances at the side mirror. "He'd done it a couple times before, and he dragged me out with him one day when he thought the conditions looked good."

"When was that?"

"April 1997," Jensen answers in his flat, emotionless monotone.

"When did you see your first tornado?" Jared asks, hoping the question will yield a less boring answer.

"You mean with him, or first one ever?"

Jared mentally kicks himself for not having considered that. "Uh, first one ever, I guess."

"I was eight. We were driving back from Jeff and Sam's house. My grandma lived with them then." Jensen's breath hitches. "We were just inside Texas when we drove right into a storm 'cause the radio was broken. Dad pulled the car over and we sat there and watched as it tore up the road in front of us. My baby sister was screaming so much we didn't even hear the rock that broke the back windshield. My brother and I only realized it when the rain started coming in." He breaks off, glancing out the side window. "He and I had watched _Godzilla Vs. Mothra_ a couple nights before. I remember thinking that the tornado sounded like Godzilla, and it knocked everything down like Godzilla, and I wished Godzilla would come and fight it. It was kinda awesome and scary as hell at the same time, y'know?"

Jared just nods, not wanting to break the spell right away. He waits a few seconds before asking his next question. "What about the first one you chased?" he says softly.

"We didn't chase it, it chased us." The corner of Jensen's mouth twitches, like he's trying to hide a smile. "There was no GPS back then--we just had paper road maps. We got so turned around we didn't realize we were heading right toward it. All of a sudden it touched down on the wrong side of the road and we knew we were in deep shit." He slows to dodge a pothole. "We turned around and hauled ass outta there, but the wind was knocking us around so bad Chris could barely keep the car on the road. We ended up ass-backwards in a ditch with two broken axles." He snorts. "Learned a lesson, though."

"Chris was your roommate?"

"Yeah." The flat robot voice again. Jared swallows a sigh.

"Were you guys both meteorology majors?"

"He was." Jared waits for the rest of the explanation, but it doesn't come.

"Why weren't you?"

Jensen's jaw tightens. "What do you care?"

"I'm just trying to gather information," replies Jared. "It's my job to figure out why you chase storms."

"What the hell for?"

Jared frowns. "You know, for my ethnography paper." At Jensen's blank look, his stomach sinks. "Professor Collins told you what I'm doing, didn't he?"

Jensen shrugs. "He just asked me to let you follow me around for a couple weeks. Didn't really say why."

"I have to write a paper about you," Jared explains, though it's hard to hear himself speak over the blood rushing in his ears. "I can't get into grad school unless I raise my ethnography grade, and Professor Collins assigned me to study storm chasing."

"What the fuck is etho--entha--"

"Ethnography," Jared fills in. "It's the study of a culture through participant observation. The researcher learns about a different culture by participating in its activities and traditions."

Jensen narrows his eyes. "So you're gonna put everything I say in your paper?"

"Not everything." Jared stops the recording. "But a lot of things, yeah."

"You never told me that," says Jensen with an edge of barely controlled anger.

"I thought you knew," replies Jared. "I wasn't trying to deceive you."

Jensen glares at him. "Well, you did." He turns back to the road, jaw clenched.

Jared swallows hard. "I'm sorry." Jensen doesn't so much as twitch. "I'm really sorry. I had no idea...I really thought Professor Collins would have told you everything. I shouldn't have..." He trails off when he realizes just how badly he messed up. He broke the most important ethical rule of participant observation--getting informed consent from his informant. Technically, all the research he's done up to this point is invalid. How could he have forgotten something so incredibly important?

He's so completely screwed. He either has to lie and say he got Jensen's consent before the study or throw out all the notes he's made, including today's, and with Jensen so (rightly) pissed off at him he doesn't know how he'll gain Jensen's trust back enough to get more information out of him. Crap. What was he thinking? He wasn't thinking. That's the problem. Jesus, maybe he doesn't belong in the Master's program after all, if he's that stupid. He deserves to have to crawl back to his family and admit that he's the total failure they said he was. Their words echo in his head, drowning out the radio and road noise, and now he can't breathe and he's so sick to his stomach he's afraid he's going to throw up in Jensen's truck.

"Pull over," he gasps, clawing at the door handle. "Please."

"What?" Jensen's voice sounds faraway, like they're at opposite ends of a tunnel.

"Pull over!" Jared shouts, squeezing his eyes shut against the vertigo.

Jensen wrenches the wheel sideways and slams on the brakes. Jared stumbles out, falling to his knees, and manages to crawl into the grass before losing everything he ate for breakfast. Something hard and cold smacks against his collarbone; it takes him a few seconds to figure out that it's one of Jensen's crutches, keeping him upright. He retches a few more times until there's nothing left but slimy strings of saliva and acid that burns his throat and makes him cough. He rocks back on his heels and scrubs a hand over his eyes, trying to rub away the black dots encroaching on his field of vision. The crutch disappears and he hears the truck's door open and close.

"Here." A plastic bottle is pressed into his hand. Jared unscrews the lid and takes a cautious sip of the tepid water. When his stomach doesn't immediately rebel, he drinks a little more. "Hey, slow down there," says Jensen, tapping the tip of one crutch on Jared's wrist. "You okay?"

"Yeah," Jared croaks.

"We good to keep going?"

Jared nods. "Should be." He takes a few deep breaths and moves to stand up. He's pretty surprised when Jensen extends a hand to help him. He takes the proffered support and rises to his feet, balancing himself on slightly wobbly legs. Jensen gives him a once-over and, apparently satisfied, heads to the truck. Jared climbs in after him.

"You need a bag or something?"

"No, I'll be okay," answers Jared.

Jensen nods and pulls back onto the highway. "Does that happen a lot?" he asks quietly.

Jared shrugs. He's not really inclined to share his personal crap with Jensen when he knows Jensen won't do the same for him. "Not really."

Jensen leaves Jared alone after that. Nearly half an hour passes before he speaks again. "No one but Misha's gonna read that paper, right?"

It takes Jared a second to catch up--he's not used to hearing Professor Collins's first name. "As far as I know, yeah."

Jensen nods. "Alright then."

Jared waits for Jensen to elaborate. He doesn't. "Does that mean you'll work with me?"

The long pause that ensues nearly makes Jared get sick again. Finally, Jensen shrugs. "Yeah, I guess. If I have to."

Jared lets out a breath he didn't know he was holding. "Thank you," he replies, slumping against the back of the seat.

"Just don't make me sound like a nutcase," says Jensen.

"I won't," Jared promises.

Jensen steps on the gas.  


When they stop for lunch two and a half hours later, Jensen chooses a small family restaurant where several TV news vans and a bunch of SUVs affixed with multiple antennae and odd-looking instruments are already parked. He pulls in beside a battered pickup truck topped with an amber safety light and cuts the engine. "Are other chasers here?" asks Jared, though he's fairly sure of the answer.

"Yeah." Jensen grabs his crutches and his laptop bag and heads toward the building.

Inside, the place looks more like a trendy urban cafe than a little greasy spoon in the middle of nowhere. Laptops sit on nearly every table, cell phones beep and buzz every few seconds, and extension cords are wound all around the dining area. Only the crappy country music blaring from the PA system tallies with Jared's expectations.

Jensen heads straight into the busy dining room and claims a table near the back. He plugs his laptop in the only empty outlet on a heavy-duty power strip and plugs in his mobile broadband adapter. "Are you checking the data again?" Jared asks. Jensen grunts an affirmative. "See anything good?"

"Not yet," Jensen mutters.

Jared glances around the room. Most of the chasers seem to be paired, but there are a few large groups. A group of mostly middle-aged men and women in the center of the room are wearing matching blue t-shirts. At the end of the table sits a youngish blond man with an iPhone and a nametag with "Steve" printed in large blue letters. Jared figures he's the group leader. He looks back at Jensen, who fails to acknowledge him in any way, and goes over to the group's table to approach "Steve."

Jared pulls his recorder out of his pocket and clears his throat. "Steve" looks up. "Hi, I'm Jared from Penn State and I'm writing a paper on storm chasing." He pauses. When "Steve" doesn't tell him to get lost, he goes on. "Could I ask you a couple of questions?"

"Steve" smiles warmly. "Sure, have a seat." Jared takes the empty chair across from him. "What do you want to know?"

Jared sets the recorder on the table and presses the 'record' button. "Well first, how about your name, hometown, and occupation?"

"I'm Steve Carlson and I own TXtreme Tornado Tours in Plano, Texas."

Jared writes the name in his notebook. "What's a tornado tour?"

"It's when my partner--" He indicates a spiky-haired man at the other end of the table. "--and I take our customers out on tour to chase tornadoes alongside two real live storm chasers."

Steve is more than willing to tell Jared all about how he got into storm chasing and formed his own tour business with his crazy partner/brother-in-law Michael. The tours themselves sound pretty cool, and Jared wishes he could go on one of those instead of spending the whole month trying to pry information out of tight-lipped, wary Jensen. He has to cut the interview short when Jensen calls him over to order food, but Steve assures him that they'll cross paths again.

When Jared returns to the table, Jensen looks as grumpy as ever. "CAPE isn't as strong as I'd like, but the moisture profile's okay. Not sure what we'll see today." Jared nods. He orders only a plain turkey sandwich and fries, not wanting a repeat of earlier. After the waitress leaves, Jensen gestures toward a table populated mostly by OU students, if their caps and t-shirts are any indication. "You should go talk to Jim," he says, pointing to an older man in a t-shirt that reads _Where are the flying cows? I was promised flying cows_ , with the flying-cow scene in _Twister_ silkscreened beneath the words. He's looking over a student's shoulder at a laptop screen.

Jared makes his way to the OU table. A dark-haired girl in a black tank top catches his eye and gives him a saucy smile. When he returns her interest with a friendly grin of his own, she stands up and sidles over to him. "Business or pleasure?" she asks, sliding one hand into her pocket.

"Uh...both, actually," he replies. He's never been good at flirting. "I'm from Penn State, and I'm doing a paper on storm chasing."

She raises an eyebrow. "You're not a meteorology major, though."

Jared ducks his head. "How do you know?"

"Because you look like you're completely lost," she answers. "Don't worry, we won't bite." She smirks and flips her glossy brown hair over her shoulder. "Well, I might."

Jared looks over at the table and prays that she can't see his hands shaking. "So, who are you here with?"

"We're one of OU's meteorological research teams." She points to the man Jensen identified earlier. "That's our professor, Jim Beaver. He helped start the original VORTEX project."

Jared nods and tries to pretend he knows what she's talking about. "You think maybe he would answer a few questions for me?"

"I could ask him." She grins wickedly. "But what's in it for me?"

Okay, now, this is getting a little out of hand. Jared can't remember anyone ever hitting on him this blatantly who wasn't falling-down drunk, and he really has no clue what to do about it.

"Well...um...what do you want?"

She pulls her cell phone out of her pocket. "Your number would be a good start."

Jared swallows hard. "Uh, okay." He gives her the number and she types it in her phone.

"What's your name?"

"Jared," he answers. "What's yours?"

"I'm Genevieve," she says, brushing a stray lock of hair behind her ear. "But you can call me Gen."

Jared nods. "Okay, so, can you...?"

She smiles. "Sure." He hangs back and watches her talk to Jim. After a moment, she waves him over. "This is Jared," she tells Jim. "He's got a couple of questions for you." She winks and steps aside.

Jared pulls a chair over and sits down across from Jim. Jim passes a few sheets of paper off to one of the students and smiles at him. "So, Jared, what kind of paper are you writing?"

"It's called an ethnography," Jared replies. "It's an anthropological study of a different culture."

Jim chuckles. "'Different.' That's a polite way to put it."

Jared ducks his head. "I, uh...I didn't mean it in a bad way."

"I know you didn't," replies Jim. "So, you want the real scoop on chasing?"

"That'd be great." Jared positions his recorder in the center of the table and turns it on.

"Well, contrary to what you might believe, storm chasing ain't exactly glamorous. Even the best chasers rarely see more than six or seven tornadoes each season, and most of 'em last five minutes or less. Compare that to the hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars most of us spend on chasing and it starts to seem like a fool's quest." Jim shakes his head. "You gotta have a pretty high tolerance for boredom and disappointment. That's what surprises the students most. They all look at _Twister_ and _Storm Stories_ and think chasing's some kind of extreme sport, when really, most of your time in the field is spent poring over data, eating crappy food, and sitting on your ass."

"So I'm learning," says Jared.

Jim smirks. "I know guys who can drive 5000 miles--that's Chicago to LA and back--in a month without ever leaving Kansas." Jared raises an eyebrow. "If you get into storm chasing for the thrills, you're in for a pretty big reality check."

Jim tells some stories about the students he's taken into the field--ones that took to the life quickly, and ones that didn't even last two weeks. He's in the middle of an anecdote about a sorority girl showing up a van full of meteorology geeks by using celestial navigation to get them home after their GPS got fried by lightning when Jared's phone goes off. He looks down at the text message: _food's getting cold. done flirting yet?_ He grits his teeth and deletes the message. He lets Jim finish and then excuses himself to return to Jensen.

"Find what you were looking for?" asks Jensen, sneering.

"As a matter of fact, I did," Jared answers. "Since you sure haven't been any help."

Jensen glares at him and stabs a gravy-covered fry. "Sorry I'm not the 'sharing and caring' type."

"I get that," says Jared. "But you don't have to be a jerk about it."

"What should I do, invite you to my house for a sleepover?" Jensen rolls his eyes. "We can play Truth or Dare and you can find out all my deepest, darkest secrets while I braid your hair." He picks up his knife and attacks his open-faced meatloaf sandwich.

Jared heaves an exasperated sigh. "Whatever. Forget I said anything."

"Believe me, I'm trying," growls Jensen.

Jared pushes his plate aside. He's not really hungry anymore.

If Jared thought Jensen was cold before, it's nothing compared to the treatment Jensen gives him when they leave the restaurant. Jensen starts the truck and pulls onto the highway without even glancing at Jared once. They drive for about half an hour before Jensen pulls off the road and parks in the grass, well away from the edge of the asphalt. He clips the two-way radio to his belt, retrieves his crutches from the backseat, and gets out of the truck. Jared waits a minute; when Jensen doesn't reappear, he climbs out of the truck and finds Jensen sitting on the cargo hatch looking at the sky.

"What are you doing?" Jared asks.

Jensen surprises him by actually answering. "Waiting. You know the stages of thunderstorm formation?"

"Uh...something, mature, and dissipating."

"The first is cumulus. That's what we're waiting for now."

"So we're just gonna sit here and watch the clouds?" Jared peers up at the bright blue sky and the little puffs of white that dot it. "That sounds exciting," he says dryly.

"That's 'cause you think _Twister_ was a documentary," sneers Jensen. "This ain't Hollywood, kid."

Jensen goes quiet after that. Jared scans the sky, but without a good idea what he's looking for, it's about as fulfilling as watching paint dry. Jensen seems totally comfortable, his impassive face betraying no hint of emotion whatsoever.

Jared doesn't know what Jensen's problem is, anyway. If he won't give Jared the information he needs, then Jared has to get it from others. It almost seems like Jensen was jealous, but of what? Why would Jensen care about Jared talking to Steve and Jim? Then again, Jared didn't tell either of them that he's traveling with Jensen, so maybe Jensen has a falling-out with one of them? Considering how standoffish and unpleasant Jensen's been so far, it's not out of the realm of possibility.

Or maybe it wasn't Steve and Jim at all. Maybe it was Genevieve. That doesn't seem all that likely either--she's way too young for Jensen, and Jensen's never expressed any interest in either gender in front of Jared. Maybe it's just that Jensen assumes Jared can easily get girls. Jared snorts. If only he knew.

After fifteen minutes of dead silence, Jared can't take it anymore. "What's your problem, anyway?"

"What problem?" Jensen keeps scanning the sky, even though the clouds have barely even moved since they sat down.

"With me." Jared slides off the cargo hatch and stands in front of Jensen, forcing Jensen to look at him. "No matter what I do, you seem determined to hate me, and I wanna know why. What the hell did I do?"

"Nothing," mutters Jensen. He picks up one crutch and tries to shove Jared aside with it.

Jared stands firm. "Knock it off. We're talking about this."

"No, we're not." Jensen tips his head back to glare full-force at Jared. "You wanna work, sit your ass down and work. If not, get back in the truck and leave me alone." He kicks out at Jared with his good leg.

"You're a dick, you know that?" snaps Jared.

Jensen's eyes darken. "You don't know anything about me."

"And whose fault is that?" Jared crosses his arms. "'Cause it's sure not mine."

"Get off my fucking back!" shouts Jensen.

"No!" Jensen reaches for his crutches, but Jared knocks them on the ground and grabs onto the sides of the truck, blocking him in. "Why the hell did you agree to this if you didn't want me here?"

At those words, Jensen sort of crumples, his face and body losing tension like a marionette whose strings were cut. He turns his face away from Jared and Jared steps back, stunned at the sudden reversal. "It's complicated," mutters Jensen.

"Look, I--I'm sorry," Jared sputters. "I'll just, uh...go over there." He waves a hand at the overgrown grass. Jensen doesn't respond.

Jared walks a few paces, shoving his hands in his pockets and resisting the urge to look over his shoulder. He can at least give Jensen the same space Jensen gave him earlier. He owes Jensen that much. He sits down in the grass facing the truck so he can see and hear Jensen if he needs anything.

Soon the sky starts to darken. Fluffy gray and white clouds pile up like snowdrifts, rolling over one another until half the sky is an ominous leaden gray. "We're moving out," calls Jensen, voice a little raspy from disuse. Jared gets up and joins him in the truck.

They travel about twenty miles before Jensen pulls the truck over again. He opens Jared's window and asks to borrow his pen. When Jared hands it over, Jensen points to a U-shaped cloud, barely visible against the dense cloud cover. "See that? It's a horseshoe vortex," he explains. "It's formed by air rotating over an isolated updraft."

"Is that good?" Jared asks as Jensen rolls the window back up.

"It's not bad." Jensen gives the pen back and maneuvers the Explorer back onto the blacktop.

The radio crackles to life. " _This is a warning from the National Weather Service. A severe thunderstorm warning has been issued for the following Oklahoma counties: Atoka, Bryan, Choctaw..._ "

"Where are we?" asks Jared.

"Right now? Johnston." Jensen nods at the GPS. "We're headed that way."

"Do you think we'll see a tornado?"

Jensen shrugs. "We could. Wouldn't hold my breath if I were you."

"Why not?"

"The rotation isn't strong enough," says Jensen. "I can't say for sure, but I'd be surprised if a significant tornado drops today."

"So why don't you just turn around and go home?"

Jensen glares at him. "What did I just say? You can't _ever_ know for sure. Even guys who've been doing this twenty years couldn't be a hundred percent sure there won't be any tornadoes today. If any human could predict the weather with perfect accuracy, a hell of a lotta meteorologists'd be out of a job." He turns onto a wider two-lane road. "Weather's a gamble. Always."

Jared scribbles Jensen's last statement in his notebook. Jensen turns on the two-way radio, which is now back in its place on the vent. "What are you listening to?"

"Storm spotters," Jensen answers. "Guys who report ground conditions over the SKYWARN frequency. They've got eyes and ears all over the state. If there's a sudden change in conditions, they'll be on top of it."

"How do you get to be one of those?"

"You've gotta get special training from the National Weather Service," says Jensen. "They're all volunteers, but a lot of them are with local police or fire crews--groups that respond to emergencies."

As Jared takes down the information, a few raindrops spatter on the windshield. "Does that mean we're getting close?"

"Yeah." Jensen leans over and looks through the very top of the windshield. "See that?" He points to a darker patch in the cloud cover. "That's an anvil. We want to watch for signs of rotation in that anvil."

"How?"

"I'll tell you when we get there."

They pass an intersection where a couple of vans with amber safety lights and mounted instruments are parked in the grass. "Are they chasing too?" Jensen nods. "You know them?"

Jensen shrugs. "Dunno. Didn't really look." He sighs. "Man, I wish these clouds weren't so damn low. There's some decent structure forming, but it's buried." He pulls over and starts fiddling with the GPS. "We need to get on the other side of this thing," he says absently as he types on the touchscreen.

A couple minutes later they're back on the road. Jensen points them toward the blue sky, which seems backwards to Jared. "Wait, aren't we going away from it?" he asks.

"Trust me," Jensen growls.

About half an hour later, Jensen pulls over and grabs his camera bag and tripod. "Meet me out back." Jared takes his own camera out of his pocket and joins Jensen behind the truck. When he turns to look where Jensen's camera is pointed, he gasps. The clouds look completely different. Instead of flat cloud cover, the clouds here are layered with ridges and swirls like an upside-down wedding cake. Jensen points to a trailing cloud at the bottom left side of the 'cake'. "That's what we call a 'beaver tail'," he explains. "That's feeding into the updraft. See the way it looks like it's curling around as it goes up?" Jared nods. "That's because it actually is. That's what we mean when we talk about rotation. The rotation produces that thick round cloud at the bottom, called a wall cloud." He snaps a few pictures. "Over there--" He points to the lower right. "--See that foggy area? That's the rain. This storm's what we call an LP, or low precipitation, supercell. And a gorgeous one at that."

Jensen's right; it is gorgeous. As Jared watches, the clouds do seem to twist around an unseen central point like the twirling skirt of a little girl in her first fancy dress. The darkest clouds roll inward until the bottom edge of the storm is perfectly round. All he can hear is the wind and the click of Jensen's shutter. Behind the storm, the sky is as blue as can be, though it's tinged with yellow underneath the giant wall cloud. He's not sure how much time passes, but it seems like only an instant later that Jensen declares it time to go. Jared groans.

"Come on, you wanna see it from another angle, don't you?" says Jensen as he folds up the tripod.  
Jared knows he can't say no, but he's not quite ready to leave the spectacle behind, even if it's just to see it from another angle. He nearly hits his head on the roof of the truck as he tries to climb in without taking his eyes off the sky.

Jensen turns the car toward the sunlight. "Storms always move from west to east. That means it's moving away from the sun. If we want to see the storm contrast with the sunset, we need to go in what direction?"

"Uh...east?"

"Right." Jensen nearly cracks a smile. "Moving in the same direction as the storm is called 'flanking'. In this case, we're flanking it from the southwest. We want to view it from the northeast, so we need to overtake it at some point."

Jared writes that down. "Can we do that?"

"Sure. This storm isn't moving that fast--twenty, twenty-five miles an hour, tops. No problem." Jensen guides the truck back onto the road and taps a few buttons on the GPS. It's hard to see the storm from inside the truck, since it's on Jensen's side at the moment, but Jared cranes his neck and tries to follow it anyway.

When they stop again, Jared jumps out of the truck immediately. The sun hovers just above the horizon and the thin sliver of sky beneath the storm is tinged with rose, as are the cottony clouds beyond the storm's boundaries. Jensen sets his camera up and perches on the edge of the cargo hatch. As the sun sinks, it paints the horizon with delicate shades of orange and pink, such a contrast to the heavy black wall cloud above it. The rain bands fade to wisps of golden smoke that dance around the edges of the storm. Jared can't wait to see Jensen's photographs.

They stay until night falls so Jensen can capture every change of hue from dusk to dark. Finally, Jensen packs away his equipment and the two of them climb back in the truck for the long drive home. "At least it wasn't a total bust," says Jensen.

Jared's eyes widen. "A bust? That was awesome! God, that storm...I've never seen anything like it. It was so beautiful."

"Yeah, it was," Jensen agrees with a grin. "I guess you're not disappointed, then."

"No way," replies Jared. "If that's what you get when you don't see a tornado, no wonder you like it so much." He surreptitiously slides his recorder out of his pocket and hits the button. "Do you ever wish that you could go back and see stuff like that for the first time?"

Jensen's grin falters. He's quiet for a long moment. "Yeah, sometimes I do."

"How long have you been chasing storms?"

"Eight years," Jensen answers. "And I try to find something new every time I go."

"What do you mean, 'something new'?"

"Something I haven't seen before," says Jensen. "If it's a total bust and I have a lot of time, it might be a tourist attraction or a restaurant. If it's a real rural area, it might be a new water hole or kind of bird." He ducks his head. "That probably sounds dumb."

"It doesn't." Jared smiles. "What else?"

"I like the little things," says Jensen. "The way the air smells way out in the country, how water sparkles in the sunlight. The birds and the animals living the way they were meant to, out where nobody bothers 'em." He turns onto the main road. "Sometimes I just put a bunch of food in the cooler and camp in the state parks between chases. I can go four, five days without saying a word to anyone."

"Sounds lonely," muses Jared.

Jensen shrugs. "I don't mind it."

"I would mind it." Jared picks at his shirt. "When I first left home, it took me two and a half days to drive to Pennsylvania and I didn't have a clue what I was gonna do once I got there. It was still another month before housing opened up. I ended up just living out of my truck till freshman orientation. They let me have my student ID early, so I'd shower and change in the gym every night and then find an out-of-the-way place to park and sleep. I didn't know anyone in State College and I couldn't talk to anyone at home, and after the first week I was so lonely that when I'd go to sleep, I'd pray to not wake up."

"Jesus." The truck passes under a streetlight, letting Jared see the genuine sympathy in Jensen's eyes. "Why'd your folks kick you out?"

"They didn't," Jared answers, although they might as well have. "It was my choice. I couldn't live with them anymore."

"Why not?"

"They wanted me to be someone I wasn't," he says simply.

"So are you gay, atheist, or both?"

Jared gulps. "How'd you know?"

"Takes one to know one," replies Jensen. "Gay came first, right?"

"I'm not an atheist," protests Jared. "I believe in God. I just don't believe He's the intolerant asshole my parents make Him out to be."

Jensen nods. "But you are gay."

"Yeah." Jared can't bring himself to look at Jensen.

Jensen doesn't say anything for a couple minutes. "My parents weren't around long enough to freak out about me being gay," he says quietly.

Jared doesn't know what to say to that. 

[Continue to Part Three](http://sinnerforhire.livejournal.com/402629.html)


	3. Still Staring at the Same Old Sky - Part Three

 

Jared's phone rings far too early on Friday morning. They didn't get back to Norman till one a.m., and it's not even seven now. Jared fumbles for the green button. "What?"

Jensen snickers. "Rise and shine, grumpy. I'm picking you up at ten."

"For what?"

"There's a good system coming over the Rockies. We'll stay tonight in Kansas and follow it up into Nebraska."

"All right." Jared scrubs a hand over his bleary eyes. "Why'd you call so freakin' early?"

"Because I can." Jared can practically hear Jensen smirk over the phone line. "Pack up, shower, and get breakfast downstairs. I'll see you later."

Jared sighs and tosses his phone on the nightstand. He runs a hand through his hair and trudges into the shower.

By the time Jensen picks him up, he's pretty much awake. He stows his suitcase and laptop bag in the back and climbs into the passenger seat. "So where are we going?"

"We're gonna take I-35 up into Kansas for now," answers Jensen. "We'll stop for lunch once we get past the state line. I wanna get through Wichita before rush hour."

Jared nods. "Sounds good."

Jensen keeps the horrible country radio station on till they lose the signal and then shuts it off. "I got some questions for you," Jensen says, a hint of challenge in his voice.

"Okay," Jared replies. "What about?"

"What exactly are you writing your paper about?"

Jared relaxes. He'd expected worse. "Well, I'm writing an ethnography about storm chasing. I'm gathering research that will help me determine why you guys are so into it."

"But why do you care?"

Jared shrugs. "Because Professor Collins told me to care, basically."

"No, I mean, why would anyone care why we do this?"

"Because anthropologists want to know why _everybody_ does what they do," answers Jared. "They look for patterns of thought or behavior that occur in different cultures and try to find out why those patterns develop and what they mean." He clicks on his recorder. "One of my professors studied a group of hunters at their deer camp, talking about how their traditions grew out of early American folk practices. Another time he wrote a paper about both sides of the conflict over a local pigeon shoot--the shooters and the PETA protestors. He analyzed what the event meant to both groups. It was pretty cool, actually."

"I didn't know you could study things like that," says Jensen, and he actually sounds interested. "So how'd you get into this stuff?"

Jared hesitates. In the daylight, with a whole day of driving ahead of them, he's not sure he wants to tell Jensen the truth. He knows that it will probably help gain even more of Jensen's trust, but that doesn't make it any less painful. "Well, it's kind of a long story."

"We've got time," replies Jensen.

Jared swallows hard. If he can get through the whole thing without breaking down, he'll be shocked. "When I was a freshman, I took Intro to Anthropology as a general ed requirement, and the TA for the class was just--" Even though it's been almost two years, Jared's heart still starts beating fast at the mere thought of him. "He was gorgeous. And funny, and kind, and brilliant."

"What was his name?"

Jared looks out the side window. "Tom." His voice shakes slightly. He's only told the whole story twice before, and both times he ended up in tears halfway through. "I knew I was gay, but I'd never been with a guy before. I'd barely even touched a guy before. You just didn't do things like that where I grew up."

Jensen nods. Jared catches his eye and is a little surprised to see the understanding there. "Yeah, I know what you mean."

Jared twists the hem of his shirt around his finger and goes on. "He used to hold study sessions in the library. Of course, I went to all of them. After a few weeks, he asked me to get coffee with him." He takes a deep breath. "After that our study sessions became more...private. I mean, we still did study a lot, but we...did other stuff, too."

"You can say the word, Jared," Jensen says, but his voice is gentle, not teasing.

"He taught me pretty much everything I knew about sex," Jared goes on, slightly emphasizing the last word in response to Jensen's admonition. "He was patient. He didn't pressure me into anything. I thought that meant he really loved me."

"So what happened?"

"I kept taking his classes, and we kept sleeping together. He started letting me come to parties with his friends. He even took me home to his parents' house for Thanksgiving break. I was totally and completely in love with him." Jared's stomach twists. "And then, I was staying over with him one night. He must have thought I was asleep, because he flat-out told somebody over the phone that he was just using me to get better scores on his teaching evals."

"Oh, man," murmurs Jensen. "That's rough."

Jared's eye burn with tears he really doesn't want to shed. He ducks his head so Jensen won't see. "I wanted to change majors, but I had so many anthro credits that I couldn't switch to anything else and still graduate on time. But the semester we broke up is when I got the low grade that's keeping me from applying to the Master's program. And that's why I'm here studying you."

Jensen nods, keeping his eyes on the road. "I'm sorry."

"Thanks." Jared hastily swipes a tear from his cheekbone and stares out the side window.

The truck stays silent for the next fifteen miles. "I used to have a chase partner," says Jensen, out of the blue. "Justin. He was a good kid, just graduated from OU, where he'd spent two seasons chasing with your friend Jim." Jared nods, although he can't exactly call Jim a friend. "His dream was to chase for one of the local TV stations, but he needed some solid experience first, so I took him on as a driver."

"Okay," replies Jared, not really sure where this is all going.

"He wasn't bad, but he didn't really have the instinct, y'know? He was too caught up in the numbers--chasing warnings instead of storms. So I worked with him for a couple weeks, took him on a few chases close to home." Jensen slows a bit to pass a tractor-trailer on the shoulder. "Anyway, we didn't see much that year, but he learned a lot so I took him back next season. He still had some trouble, but he was a lot quicker on the uptake out in the field. He got a new truck that winter and put in all the gadgets--GPS, NOAA radio, scanner, the works. All I had was a refurbed '89 Bronco that was showing its age, so I didn't mind using his truck till I could talk Jeff into finding me a better one."

Jared nods. He still can't figure out what this has to do with anything. "All right..."

"We went up to South Dakota one weekend and ended up in this little hole-in-the-wall town with one motel and one bar right beside it. We met up with every other chaser in town. KU and OU were there, along with a DOW crew and a buncha hobbyists." Before Jared can ask about the abbreviation, Jensen explains. "Doppler on Wheels--these huge-ass trucks that carry Doppler radar and a bunch of other instruments to measure storm intensity. The truck that we ran into was also carrying twin girls from your neck of the woods, these little blonde things who walked around half-naked like it was the middle of August instead of mid-May."

Jensen rolls his eyes. "I don't even know how they got into the bar; they looked like they were about sixteen. But they did, and Justin spotted 'em. I told him I didn't care what he did, 'long as he was up in the morning ready to go."

"So what happened?"

"Well, he came back to the room at dawn and we went over the forecast. I knew where everybody else would probably go, so I wanted to go to another area that wasn't as likely to blow up, but if it did, it'd be a monster. I told him to keep it quiet, 'cause if it didn't bust, we'd be the only ones with the images." He shakes his head and chuckles. "So what do you think happened?"

"He told the girls?"

Jensen snorts. "He not only told the girls, he took off with the girls. In the truck. Without telling me."

"Oh, crap. What'd you do?" asks Jared, totally caught up in the narrative.

"Hitched a ride with the DOW crew, who now had two empty seats, got some gorgeous shots at the main event, and rode with them back to OU, where I had to catch a bus home."

"What happened to him and the girls?"

Jensen grins. "I went over to Justin's the next morning to give him hell, but he wasn't in his apartment. So I called him. Guess where he was."

"Still in the motel in South Dakota?"

"Better." Jensen glances at Jared and smirks. "Jail."

Jared's eyes widen. "For what?"

"The girls were so pissed that they went to the wrong place that they set him up. They went to a bar, made sure the bartender knew he had bought them drinks, then let it slip that they were nineteen." Jensen laughs. "He wanted me to bail him out so he wouldn't have to call his parents. Kid had balls, that's for sure."

"But you didn't," Jared says with confidence.

Jensen nods, grinning. "Damn right I didn't. Little shit had it comin'." His face turns serious. "So what I'm saying is, the assholes get what they deserve in the end. May not happen that fast, but sooner or later, they'll get theirs."

Jared smiles. It's actually kind of sweet, what Jensen did--in a totally manly way, of course. "Thanks for that."

Jensen shrugs, but the grin doesn't slip. "Don't mention it."

As promised, they stop for lunch about half an hour past the state line. At the diner, the matronly hostess clucks her tongue at Jensen. "What happened to your leg, honey?"

Jensen's jaw tightens. "Car accident."

"Oh, that just terrible, young thing like you." She shows them to a table near the back. "Your server will be out in a minute. If you need anything, just holler."

"I hate that," mutters Jensen once she's out of earshot.

Jared nods. "Yeah, that must suck."

"I can always see it," says Jensen. "Even when people don't come out and ask, they wanna know. Old guys'll ask if I'm a vet--that's not so bad. The old ladies are the worst."

"Why?"

"They either try to fuss over me the whole time or they tell me these stupid stories about their disabled grandkids, like autism is anywhere like losing your fucking leg."

"How long has it been?" Jared asks softly, well aware that he's treading on shaky ground.  
Jensen looks down at his hands. "Ten years."

"Feel free to tell me to shut up, because it really isn't any of my business," says Jared, "but did you ever look into a prosthetic?"

Jensen nods, but he won't meet Jared's eyes. "At first I couldn't afford one, then once I had the money saved up I found out it was more trouble than it was worth."

"What do you mean?" Jared's hands itch for his notebook.

"It made it harder to do certain things, 'stead of easier," answers Jensen. "I had trouble standing up, and it was a huge hassle to get in and out of the truck. I tried it for a week and by the end of it, I was ready to burn the damn thing." He flicks his eyes up to Jared for just a second. "I don't mind the crutches. I can get around better than a lotta other people."

"Is that why you didn't get a tag for your truck?"

Jensen shrugs. "I figured there were other people out there who needed it more." He picks up his knife and traces shapes on the table with it. "It doesn't stop me from chasing storms or working, so I'm pretty lucky, I guess. I mean, there's times when I'm taking pictures that I can't always get the angles I want, but other than that..."

Jared turns his placemat over and asks Jensen for a pen. "What for?"

"I need to write down what you said," Jared tells him.

Jensen frowns. "Do you have to?"

"I don't have to put it in my paper, but I'd like to have it," replies Jared.

Jensen relents and hands over a mechanical pencil. "'S'all I've got."

"Thanks." Jared writes down as many of Jensen's exact words as he can remember. He likes Jensen's no-frills way of speaking, with its smooth cadence and slight Texas drawl. It's kind of refreshing to hear someone who sounds like home, but it's bittersweet as well.

A middle-aged waitress stops and takes their orders, which kind of kills the moment. Jared orders a grilled chicken sandwich and fries, and Jensen orders a cheesesteak sub and chips. Jared decides to give Jensen a break from the heavy stuff. "So, what's our plan now?"

Jensen perks up at that. "Well, we'll probably stop again at the I-70 junction and then head west till we find a good place to stop for the night. Then tomorrow, if things go well, we'll follow it up into Nebraska."

"And if things don't go well?"

"Then we're gonna be pretty damn bored." Jensen's eyes light up and Jared looks behind him to see the waitress returning with their food. Man, that was quick. Then again, it's not very crowded. "But I think we've got a real good chance of seeing at least one tornado this weekend."

"Awesome." Discussion is put on hold by unspoken order, although Jensen does talk about the meteorological forces in the Rockies and how they affect the weather all the way across the country. Jared doesn't understand most of it, but he tells himself to be grateful that Jensen's opened up to him at all.

The hostess gives them a syrupy smile as they leave and Jared can't blame Jensen when he mumbles an expletive as soon as the door closes behind them. Jensen peels out of the parking lot and whips onto the road so fast that Jared has to fight back a wave of nausea. "I know you're mad, but killing your engine'll just make you feel worse."

Jensen backs off the accelerator. "Sorry." He keeps it to a reasonable speed after that.

Unfortunately, that doesn't make Jared feel any better. Just as Jensen makes the turn towards the on-ramp, Jared's stomach does a swan dive and he knows he's in trouble. "Pull over," he croaks, pounding on the door for emphasis. Jensen immediately complies and Jared shoves the door open, barely clearing the bottom edge as he heaves his lunch into the grass.

"Shit," he hears Jensen mutter. Jared tries to apologize, but he can't stop retching long enough to say it. He clutches the door handle with all his strength as his stomach tries to turn itself inside out.

When he finally manages to control his gag reflex, he collapses against the back of the seat and coughs. "God, that sucked."

Jensen reaches behind the seat and pulls out a bottle of water. He wipes the condensation with the tail of his shirt and unscrews the cap. "Small sips," he says, handing the bottle to Jared. Jared does as he's told, praying it'll stay down. "You okay?"

"I hope so," he rasps, his throat burning from the abuse. He wipes the sweat and tears from his face with his sleeve and clears his throat.

Jensen glances in the rearview mirror. "You need me to stop again, just yell." He guides the truck onto the ramp and merges onto the highway.

They haven't even reached the next exit before Jared's stomach seizes up with a cramp so vicious it takes his breath away. "Now!" he groans, doubling over. Jensen wrenches the truck off the road and Jared can't even wait for it to come to a full stop before he has to throw the door open and empty the meager contents of his stomach onto the asphalt. His throat feels like it's being ripped to shreds every time he spits up another gob of acid and bile, and his arms shake so badly he nearly tumbles headfirst out of the seat. Only Jensen's death grip on his shoulder keeps him upright, and it's Jensen's hands that pull him back into the seat and brush his sweat-soaked hair off his face.

"Think you can make it another coupla miles?" Jensen asks softly. "I'll get off at Wellington and we'll find a place to hole up for the night."

"Yeah, okay," he croaks. Jensen hands over the water bottle, but Jared's hand is so unsteady that Jensen has to help support the bottle as Jared takes the tiniest sips he can manage.

Jensen takes the next exit and stops at the first motel they come to. "Stay here," he says, rolling down Jared's window. "I'll be right back." Jared rests his head against the window frame and lets the light breeze dry the sweat on his forehead and soothe his gritty eyes. He closes his eyes, just for a second, and next thing he knows, Jensen's arm is gripping his shoulder and he's leaning half out of the truck, now parked halfway across the lot. "Hey, you with me?"

"I think so." Jared's eyes don't want to focus. There's another voice, a low baritone he doesn't recognize, and then he's moving, stumbling forward with the help of whatever Good Samaritan Jensen found inside the motel. It's only when Jensen and the stranger settle him on the bed closest to the door--and the bathroom--he realizes that the walls are spinning.

And then the knife twists in his gut again and it's all he can do to keep from falling facedown on the floor as he tries to get out of bed and into the bathroom. Luckily, the stranger's on the ball and he rushes Jared to the toilet just as Jared loses the battle with his stomach for the third time. And then Jensen's there, with a cold cloth for the back of his neck and a cup of lukewarm water to rinse out his mouth.

It all gets a little fuzzy after that. The next few hours are a blur of pain and misery, his world reduced to sensations: the fire in his throat, the barbed agony in his belly, the cold sweats and shivers, the warmth of Jensen's hands and the soothing chill of the ice chips Jensen feeds him periodically.

Sometime later--Jared doesn't know if it's minutes or hours--Jensen leaves his side and returns with someone else, a woman with soft hands and a gentle voice who gives him pills and a sweet drink that make the pain back off and his eyes grow heavy. Next thing he knows, he's wrapped in cool, crisp sheets and supported by plump pillows. And then there's a strong, sure hand massaging the soreness out of his abused stomach muscles and hot breath ghosting over his forehead, and he drifts off to sleep with a sense of peace and security he thought he'd never feel again.

Someone's shaking him.

"G'way," Jared mumbles. "Sleepin'."

"You can sleep in the car," says Jensen, but his voice is gentle, almost apologetic. "If we want to see anything today, we gotta get on the road _now_. We've got a five-hour drive ahead of us."  
Jared pries his eyes open and squints up at Jensen, who's far too energetic for Jared's taste.

"Seriously?"

"You'll thank me later. C'mon, up." Jensen tugs on Jared's arm.

"All right, all right. God, you're bossy." Jared puts a hand down to push himself up and is shocked to feel hard tile under his fingers. His eyes fall on the shower curtain and he realizes he's still in the bathroom. Then it all comes rushing back to him. Oh, God. He untangles himself from the bedclothes that someone brought in for him during the night and finds he's only wearing his undershirt and boxers, which means that Jensen took his clothes off last night while Jared was half out of his mind. He can't believe Jensen actually took care of him. And was _good_ at it. And doesn't seem to resent Jared at all even though he has more than enough reason to.

"Hey, your stuff's in the closet," Jensen calls from the room. "I had the manager bring everything up after you crashed."

Jared trudges out to the closet. Sure enough, his suitcase and laptop bag are neatly tucked in the corner next to a plastic laundry bag with his clothes from yesterday, which he thinks he might have to burn when this is over. He digs a shirt and cargo pants out of his suitcase and goes back in the bathroom to change--not that he really has any dignity left to save at this point. Man, he owes Jensen big time. He's not sure he would handle things nearly as well if their positions were reversed. Which, God willing, they won't be. Now he knows why Jensen goes out of his way not to order eggs at breakfast.

Jensen appears in the doorway. "Take your time. I'll go down and check out. You think you can get all the bags?"

"Sure." He can't believe how nice Jensen's being. He wonders whether Jensen's newfound kindness toward him is genuine or if he thinks Jared still needs to be treated like a delicate flower. He hopes it's the former.

When he gets down to the parking lot with his bags and Jensen's duffle, Jensen's sitting in the backseat of the truck with his laptop. When Jared opens the passenger door, he finds his seat already reclined. Jared grins. "Hey, Jensen?"

"Yeah?" Jensen doesn't look up.

"I just wanna say--thanks. For, uh...you know. Everything."

Jensen shrugs. "Don't mention it." He taps a few keys on the laptop and closes it. "You good to go?"

"Yeah, I'm good." _Thanks to you._

Jensen flips down the back of the driver's seat and maneuvers himself into it with far more grace than Jared ever could hope to. Jared climbs into the passenger seat and lies back, content to let Jensen do his thing. Jensen punches their destination into the GPS and taps Jared's leg. "You feel okay?"

"Great," Jared answers, and it's actually true. Yesterday and last night are still kind of hazy and distant in his memory, enough that he can almost pretend it happened to someone else. Except he has to be kind of grateful for it, because the whole thing seems to have struck some kind of chord in Jensen. He hopes it lasts. It would be nice to be treated like a friend rather than an annoying child.

Jared falls asleep shortly after they get on I-135. When he wakes up, the first thing he sees is a sign for I-70 West. "Where are we?" he asks, rubbing his eyes and raising the back of his seat.

"Few miles outside of Hays," Jensen answers.

"How long was I out?"

"About two and a half hours." Jensen chuckles. "You didn't miss a damn thing."

They stop in Oakley for gas, food, and data. "Conditions look great," says Jensen. "I've got a good feeling about today."

Jensen takes them way out into the country. "It's been scientifically proven that Kansas is literally flatter than a pancake," he tells Jared as he pulls off the road into a vacant field so large Jared can't tell where it begins or ends, an ocean of grass that occasionally ripples in the breeze that's picking up. "That's the inflow winds," Jensen explains. "That's a good sign."

Jared helps Jensen spread a blanket on the ground and they eat sandwiches (peanut butter and jelly for Jared, no meat in sight) and chips and apple slices while they watch the cumulus bubble up and collapse, bubble up and collapse, until finally a tower spreads out in the characteristic anvil shape and Jensen's eyes light up. They pack up and are back on the road in a couple of minutes.  
Jensen pulls over, but not off the road, and opens the window. "See that?" he says, pointing to a little puff of cumulus peeking out from the top of the anvil. "That's an overshooting top. If it lasts for more than ten minutes, it damn near guarantees a supercell."

Jensen keeps driving for about half an hour while Jared watches the huge clouds puff up into artful mounds, like whipped cream on a planet-sized ice cream sundae. One end of the sky darkens, while on the other the sun shines on, blissfully oblivious to the tumult. Jensen pulls over and points at the far side of the storm, where the fluffy clouds trail down to a point like a lizard's tail. "That's a flanking line, produced by convergence along an outflow boundary."

"And that means...?"

"Winds coming together near the surface start to feed into the main storm, giving it more power." Jensen grins. "It's a good sign."

Finally, Jensen finds a good place to pull over. "Stay near the truck," he cautions Jared. The clouds are denser and darker now, looking so heavy that Jared can't imagine how they don't just fall out of the sky. Jensen points out the beginnings of rotation in the center of the storm, then sets up his camera and starts taking photos. As Jared watches, a thick leaden ring forms in the very center of the storm, pulling the clouds above it into a circular pattern that looks for all the world like a UFO.

"Are you sure this isn't the Apocalypse starting?" Jared says. He means it as a joke, but his voice takes on an edge of fear he didn't intend.

Jensen smiles. "I'm sure." He cuffs Jared on the shoulder. "This one's gonna spin out a funnel. I can feel it."

"You can?" Jared frowns. "Like, literally?"

"No." Jensen chuckles. "It's an instinct. I've been doing this for eight years now, so I can just...y'know, _feel_ it."

The wind whips around them, tangling Jared's hair and forcing Jensen to steady his tripod. "We're safe here, right?" Jared asks.

"We're fine." Jensen turns and brushes a lock of hair out of Jared's eyes. "Trust me."  
And the thing is, Jared does. More than he's trusted anyone else since his parents shattered his heart.

Jensen cups his hand over the LCD screen on his camera and motions for Jared to lean in. "See that?" he says, pointing to a smudge of black under the base of the storm.

"Yeah. What is it?"

"That's the wall cloud." Jensen looks up at him, his lips barely an inch from Jared's own. "Wanna see it up close?"

"Yes," Jared murmurs. "God, yes." Except he doesn't want to move. The whole world has narrowed down to Jensen's breath on Jared's cheek and Jensen's lips right there where Jared could just lean forward and--

"Jared!" Jared starts, nearly hitting his head on Jensen's camera. "C'mon, we don't have much time."

Jared climbs into the truck and tries to ignore the hollow feeling in his chest and the heat low in his belly. Jensen slams the truck into gear and takes off down the narrow county road, frantically tapping on the GPS. The storm looms above them, a gaping maw consuming the sun and the land and everything in between, insatiable and greedy. Jensen swerves around a ninety-degree corner, throwing Jared against the door hard enough to rattle his teeth. Jared struggles to push back the panicked feeling of _Oh God this is not the direction we're supposed to be going_ , telling himself that Jensen knows what he's doing and he's not going to drive headlong into the mouth of the beast.

The NOAA radio plays an earsplitting warning, seemingly just for the two of them. Jensen slaps the device into submission and aims the truck directly at the oppressive black void. A sudden gush of rain drenches the windshield, and Jensen cranks the wipers up to maximum. The inside of the truck is nearly pitch-black, but Jared can just make out enough of Jensen's face to see the thrill in his eyes.

Jensen turns again and the truck careens down a gravel road. Tiny rocks pelt the lower body, a constant _tick-tick-tick_ like a countdown to the end of the world. The truck rattles across a wooden bridge and Jensen lets out an excited whoop. He stops the truck a few feet off the bridge and fastens a plastic covering atop his camera lens. "Jared! There!" he yells as he rolls down the window. Jared looks at where he's pointing the camera and _oh crap, there it is_ , tiny wisps of black vapor coalescing into a thick funnel.

Jared holds his breath as the funnel starts to stretch down and down until a plume of dust kicks up beneath it and starts to whirl upwards until the two connect. The tornado careens across the field, devouring sod and earth and spinning it back out in an ephemeral sheen of dust that swirls around the base of the funnel and evaporates into nothingness. The beast roars at the top of its lungs, ravenous to the point of fury, the painful sound swallowing the click of Jensen's shutter and the pounding of Jared's heart. Conrad had it all wrong. _This_ is the heart of darkness--all-consuming, terrifying, and awesome in the truest sense of the word.

And suddenly, it's gone. In the space of a heartbeat, it's disappeared.

"Where'd it go?" shouts Jared. "What happened?" Jensen doesn't answer. "Jensen!" He puts a hand on Jensen's shoulder and is shocked to feel him trembling under the sweat-soaked fabric. "Hey! JENSEN!"

Jensen whips his head around, but it's so dark Jared can't make out his features. Suddenly, the truck jerks forward and rocks. There's a deafening roar, so loud that Jared can feel it resonate through his body from head to toe and he clamps his jaw shut against the vibration. With no warning, the truck shoots forward so fast that Jared would have gone through the windshield without his seatbelt, and he has no idea where Jensen is going because there's no light _anywhere_ , it's like being inside a black hole, and the truck is trying to shake itself apart, and _this is it oh my God we're gonna die oh please God no_ \--

And then there's nothing.

"--mon, wake up, Jared."

Jared struggles to pry his eyes open. God, it's bright. _Really_ bright.

Heaven bright?

"Goddamn it, Jared! Wake the fuck up already."

Apparently not.

He finally manages to open his eyes all the way, but it takes several dozen blinks to make Jensen's worried face come into focus. He tries to tell Jensen to quit yelling at him, but it comes out more like "whhllhnghhme."

"Here." Jensen props him up and presses a bottle of water to his lips. Jared sips it slowly.

"What happened?" he asks as Jensen helps him sit up.

"You passed out," says Jensen. "Scared the shit outta me."

"Out of _you_?" Jared whirls around to face Jensen. "I thought I was _dead_! You almost got us both killed back there. What the hell were you thinking?"

"I screwed up, okay?" Jensen replies, his voice rough. "I thought we were in good position. I didn't know it was gonna jump around like that. That's--not normal."

"Aren't you the one who said there is no normal when it comes to storms?" says Jared, turning Jensen's own teachings back on him. "How are you still even here, if you take chances like that?"

Jensen's expression goes cold. "I _don't_ take chances like that. I know what I'm doing."

"Then how do you explain--"

He never gets a chance to finish. Next thing he knows, Jensen surges forward and captures his lips in a furious, heated kiss. Jared falls back against the door, but Jensen's hand under his head cushions the blow. Jensen plunges his tongue into Jared's mouth and crushes their lips together hard enough to bruise. The onslaught makes Jared's head spin. He can't breathe, can't think; he's drowning in Jensen's heat and hunger and desperation and it's too much, _way_ too much like hurtling into the void. He shoves Jensen as hard as he can and gasps for breath. "Please--I can't--"

"Shit," mutters Jensen. "I'm sorry, I--dammit." He lays a hand on Jared's shoulder. "You alright?"

_No. Yes. I don't know._ "I, uh...I guess so." His heart is pounding like crazy, he's kind of lightheaded, and the blood rushing in his ears sounds eerily like the wind that wanted to sweep them away.

Jensen's hand curls around Jared's neck. "Hey, c'mere," he murmurs. Jared lets Jensen draw him in close and guide his head to rest on Jensen's shoulder. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to get as close as we did. It was reckless and stupid and I can't blame you for being pissed at me." One corner of his mouth quirks up. "Hell, I'm pissed at me."

"I really thought we were gonna die," Jared says, his voice shaking.

Jensen sighs. "I kinda did, too," he admits softly. "When I got us away from the damage path, I looked at you and you were all slumped over--fuck, I thought you were dead. And I freaked."

"Is that why you, uh--"

Jensen rubs the back of his neck. "Yeah." He looks up. "It was just timing, right? You didn't, uh..."

"Not like it?" Jared kind of loves the fact that he's the less awkward person in this situation. That doesn't happen...well, ever. "No...wait, I mean, yeah, it was really good, just...I kinda couldn't breathe."

"I noticed," replies Jensen, but there's no hint of mockery in his tone. "You ever talk to anyone about that?"

Jared shrugs. "I see a counselor at school sometimes. She thinks medication might help, but my student insurance won't cover it and the only money I have is what I make from my work-study job, and that's not anywhere close to enough." He frowns. "How do you know about...y'know--"

Jensen lets out a humorless laugh. "I got my leg cut off because of a car accident. You think I could even _look_ at a car without hyperventilating after that?"

"But you got over it."

"Yeah, pretty much." He snorts. "But if you think I wasn't shitting my pants when I saw that tornado drop right beside us, you're an idiot."

"Then why'd you get so close?"

Jensen hesitates. He swallows hard and looks out the side window. "I didn't think we were that close. I thought we were safe where we were. And then everything got out of control so fast..."  
His voice drops to a near-whisper. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay," says Jared, and he's surprised to find he actually means it. "Everybody makes mistakes. We're fine, the truck's fine...we can work with that."

Jensen nods. "You're right. We can work with this." Jensen glances at his watch. "But right now, the only thing I wanna work with is a big juicy steak." He grins. "It's a chaser tradition. If you have a successful chase, you've gotta have steak afterwards. And there's a pretty good place up in Colby."

"I don't know about you, but I could use a drink...or ten," Jared replies.

"Sounds good to me." Jensen winks at him and slides into the flattened driver's seat. Jared climbs out of the backseat and joins Jensen in the front.

When they get to Montana Mike's, Jensen points out several vehicles he recognizes. As they're making their way to the front door, a car honks behind them. Jared turns to see a van with the OU School of Meteorology logo emblazoned on its door. He hears Jensen's crutches thump loudly on the pavement and turns to see Jensen hurrying toward the restaurant. Jared sighs and jogs after him.

Once they get inside, they're shown to the back corner of the lounge, where Steve's tour group is seated at a long table and several people are gathered near the TV mounted on the wall, to which a professional-looking video camera is hooked. A couple of them cheer, and Jared looks up to see the tornado spinning in all its destructive glory across the center of the screen. He squints but doesn't find the Explorer anywhere in the shot.

"Well, well, well," purrs a female voice behind them.

Jared grits his teeth and turns around. "Oh, hey, Gen."

"I was hoping I'd run into you again," she says with a coy smile. "I thought we could...exchange notes later, if you wanted. We're staying just up the road, at the Quality Inn."

"Sorry, I already have plans tonight," he says, raising his voice just enough for Jensen to be able to hear.

She raises an eyebrow. "What kind of plans?"

"Romantic ones, actually," he answers, and is taken aback by his own boldness.

"Oh." Her face falls. "You know where I'll be if you change your mind."

He smirks. "I'm not going to, but thanks." Before she can say anything else, Jared walks back to the booth where Jensen's seated and slides in beside him, then wraps an arm around his shoulders and presses a chaste kiss to his temple. "Miss me?"

"Damn straight," mutters Jensen, but Jared can see the admiration shining through the grouchy facade.

"Well, I'm not going anywhere," Jared tells him.

A waitress arrives then with a pitcher of beer and a basket of peanuts. "The guys in the blue would like to congratulate you for surviving your first chase. Said it looked like a close one." Jared glances at Steve, who tips an imaginary hat and grins. Jared nods and smiles back.

He's surprised to see the scowl on Jensen's face when he turns back. "I was hoping no one recognized us. It's probably on fucking YouTube already," he grumbles.

"How would they know it was you?" asks Jared.

"Chasing's a pretty small world," replies Jensen. "I've been doing this for eight years; most of the guys in here've been at it for twice that. There's only so many bars and diners in the middle of nowhere, so you run into the same buncha people all the time. Somebody'll hook up a TV or laptop and show off their footage, then you'll get to shooting the shit and next thing you know, it's last call. We all read the same websites and stuff, so eventually you put names to the faces."

Jared reaches into his pocket and realizes he has no idea where his notebook is. He does find a pen, so he opens up his napkin and scribbles down as much as he remembers of Jensen's statement.

"That's still kinda creepy," says Jensen. "You acting like the shit I say means something. There's plenty of guys in here with meteorology degrees who can explain things a hell of a lot better than I could."

"So what? I'm not trying to learn how you guys do what you do, I'm trying to learn why. And for the record, I like the way you talk. You don't try to impress me with big words or pretentious philosophical crap. You say just what you mean, exactly the way you think it, and that makes my job a whole lot easier, actually."

Jensen shrugs. "If you say so." He takes a drink of his beer.

They're interrupted by the arrival of their food--two thick, juicy steaks, loaded baked potatoes, and sweet corn swimming in butter. It smells ever better than it looks, and Jensen eyes his steak with such naked desire that Jared almost feels a little jealous. He's got to figure out how to make Jensen look at _him_ that way.

When they get back to the room, Jared's pretty sure he's moved from buzzed into full-on drunk. His limbs feel loose and heavy, and when Jensen stops to unlock the door Jared leans into him and rests his chin on Jensen's shoulder. "You smell good," he murmurs, and Jensen really does--there's a hint of spice under the dark tang of sweat and leather and Jensen.

"Well, thank you kindly," Jensen drawls in a laughably fake cowboy accent. He opens the door and nudges Jared upright. "Think you can make it to the bed there, lightweight?"

"'M not that drunk," Jared protests. He walks in a perfect straight line to the far side of the bed and kicks off his shoes. He tosses his belt and wallet on the floor and grins at the satisfying clunk, then flops down on the bed and pulls off his socks. "And who're you callin' a lightweight? You had, like, 4 beers."

"I was driving, genius." Jensen sits on the bench outside the bathroom and removes his own shoe, then carefully balls his sock and places it inside. "I think one near-death experience a day is enough, don't you?"

"Yeah, maybe you're right." Jared pats the mattress beside him. "What're you waitin' for, an engraved invitation?"

Jensen moves across to the bed and leans his crutches against the bedside table. "You gonna give me one?"

Jared gets to his knees and crawls across the bed to grab Jensen by the lapels. "I got somethin' better in mind," he purrs, pressing his lips to Jensen's. As Jensen relaxes into the kiss, Jared yanks him forward and spins so that Jensen ends up on the far side when he hits the bed. He rolls over and, without breaking the kiss, straddles Jensen's hips. Jensen plants both hands on Jared's ass and grinds Jared's already-hard cock against his own. He knows it's supposed to feel good, but the zippers in the way just make it painful and Jared can't help grunting a little at the discomfort.

Jensen pulls back. "Y'okay?"

"Screw this," mutters Jared, reaching for his fly. He turns over and wriggles out of his pants and shorts, tossing them over the side of the bed. "There, that's better."

"Damn right it is," growls Jensen. "Jesus, look at you." He shifts onto his good leg and lightly runs one finger up the length of Jared's shaft. Jared shivers, hair standing on end, as Jensen slides a fingertip across the tip. "Fuck, that's pretty."

Jared's cheeks heat up. "Come on."

"I mean it," replies Jensen, voice husky with hunger and need. "Now quit pussyin' around and get up here so I can taste you."

Jared's not big on talking dirty, but damned if Jensen's words don't make the coil of heat in his belly to flare into an inferno of _want_ and _hell yes_ and _Oh my God **now**_. He crawls to the head of the bed and straddles Jensen's chest. Jensen takes Jared's length in one hand and licks a bead of precome from the slit. Jared grabs the top of the headboard, terrified that his knees will go weak and he'll choke Jensen to death.

"You're thinking," growls Jensen. "Knock it off." He jacks Jared's cock with one hand and closes his lips around the head, flicking his tongue over the tip and nearly making Jared come right then. Jensen's tongue traces around the sensitive ridge under the head and Jared's fingers curl so tight around the wood that he's sure there will be dents in the headboard when they're done.

Jensen grasps Jared's hips and supports him, alleviating some of Jared's fear, as he takes the shaft into the humid depths of his talented mouth. He tugs at Jared's hips, but it takes a second for Jared to get the message. The first thrust is cautious, tinged by the anxiety of suffocating Jensen with his cock (how embarrassing would _that_ be), but Jensen digs his fingers in and pulls Jared closer. Jared thrusts again, more confident this time, and Jensen responds by fluttering his tongue on the underside of Jared's shaft and oh God it feels _amazing_. He drops his head back and fucks into Jensen's mouth as hard as he dares, hoping for another reward. Jensen's lips are softer than he expected and create the a delicious thrill of friction against his hypersensitized cock.

Jensen laves a thick stripe up Jared's cock and flutters his tongue over the slit and that's it, Jared's knees go weak and orgasm surges through his nerves like a lightning bolt. He lets Jensen suck every drop of come from his cock and collapses onto his side, muscles twitching from the waves of aftershocks. His heart beats so loud that he thinks Jensen must hear it. He gasps for breath, loose-limbed and sated, as Jensen tangles his fingers in Jared's sweat-dampened hair and brings their mouths together. Jared can taste himself on Jensen's tongue and it's actually kind of bitter and gross, so he quickly withdraws from the kiss so he won't humiliate himself by gagging--or worse.

Jensen doesn't seem upset; he simply presses his lips to Jared's neck and kisses a trail down to the base of his throat, where he flutters his tongue right over Jared's pulse point. Jared starts to get hard again and wow, who knew neck kisses could do that? Jensen slides a hand down Jared's chest and reaches for his own fly, and Jared could kick himself for not thinking about that. He quickly nudges Jensen's hand aside and frees Jensen's cock himself. He thumbs some precome from the slit and Jensen moans deep in his throat, which is even hotter than his dirty talk. Jared traces a finger around the underside of the head, making Jensen gasp and tighten his hold on Jared's hair, and Jared curls his other hand around the back of Jensen's neck and draws him in for another kiss. He circles Jensen's shaft with the lightest touch he can manage and Jensen moans into his mouth, his tongue teasing Jared's the way Jared is teasing his cock.

Jared fists the base of Jensen's cock and jacks him with short, sharp strokes, keeping his lips pressed to Jensen's and savoring the little trembles when Jared hits a particularly sensitive spot. Jensen arches his back, thrusting up into Jared's hand and messing up the measured rhythm Jared had going. Jared responds by clamping down on the base of Jensen's cock until he squirms and Jared grins at the thrill of taking control back from Jensen. He releases the pressure and instead ghosts his fingertips up and down the shaft till Jensen growls and bites Jared's neck--not hard enough to bruise, just hard enough to convey his message. Jared flicks Jensen's slit with the tip of one finger and Jensen tenses so much that Jared knows he's right on the edge. He grasps Jensen's cock firmly and rakes a fingernail across his slit and that's it for Jensen. Jared pumps him through his orgasm as Jensen moans and shivers and goes boneless under Jared's hands.

Jared nestles his head under Jensen's chin. "That was awesome," he murmurs. "I'm glad we did this. Even if you had to almost kill me first."

Jensen chuckles. "Good night, Jared." He pulls the sheets over them both and Jared drifts off to sleep to the sound of Jensen's heartbeat under his ear and Jensen's slow, even breaths ruffling his hair.  


[Continue to Part Four](http://sinnerforhire.livejournal.com/402909.html)


	4. Still Staring at the Same Old Sky - Part Four

 

The next morning Jensen wakes him up with a kiss, and for the first time Jared doesn't mind getting up early.

When he gets out of the shower, Jensen has the TV tuned to The Weather Channel and his laptop open on the desk. "How's it look?" he asks as he finishes toweling his hair dry.

"Looks like it's stalling a little. We probably won't need to go all the way to Lincoln. Might even stay south of I-80 altogether," replies Jensen, clicking absently through his maps and charts.

"Is that bad?"

Jensen shakes his head. "Just means we'll have that much less driving to do to get home."

_Home_. The way Jensen says it so casually brings a lump to Jared's throat. He hasn't had a place to really call home in years and he still feels the loss keenly. Even though he's since realized that the family he loved never really existed in the first place, he still misses them so much it hurts, a constant gnawing ache in the pit of his stomach that never goes away no matter how  
much food and alcohol he throws at it.

"Hey, you okay?" Jared starts at the sudden intrusion of Jensen's voice into his thoughts. He whirls around and finds Jensen regarding him with a concerned frown. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong," he replies, but his voice is thin and unconvincing.

Jensen's frown slides into a scowl. "You're lying." He slides the wheeled chair across the floor to the bed and pats the rumpled sheets. "Hey, c'mere." Jared swallows hard and sits down where Jensen  
indicates. Jensen sits down beside him and puts his arm around Jared's shoulders. "Whatever it is, you can tell me." His eyes widen. "This isn't about last night, is it?"

"No! Oh, God no." In fact, the reminder about last night actually makes him feel a little better. "It's just...it's stupid. Don't worry about it."

Jensen doesn't look convinced, but he doesn't argue. Instead, he squeezes Jared's shoulders, presses a light kiss to the top of his head, and gets back in the chair. "We should start packing up anyway," he says as he glides across the floor to the desk, where his crutches are propped next to his laptop.

Jared tosses his damp towel back into the bathroom and picks up the clothes he discarded last night, the memory bringing a grin and a little bit of heat to his face. He packs them into a plastic laundry bag, which he tucks into a corner of his suitcase. He gathers his things from the bathroom vanity while Jensen puts his laptop away. Jensen's suitcase is, as usual, neatly packed and sitting at the foot of the bed. Jensen pulls out his keys and tosses them to Jared. "You know the drill."

Jared takes their bags down to the Explorer while Jensen checks out. Jensen always settles the bill himself and never lets Jared see the receipt. Jared plans on slipping his share of the expenses into Jensen's suitcase when he isn't looking, since he's sure Jensen won't accept the cash if he offers it.

Jensen joins him a couple minutes later. "Where to now?" Jared asks as Jensen guides the truck out of the parking lot.

"Minden, Nebraska," answers Jensen. "'Bout three, three and a half hours up the road. Figure we'll stop there for lunch and make a plan."

Jared nods. "Works for me."

About ten minutes later, Jensen pulls into a truck stop and hops out to pump gas. When he's finished, he taps on Jared's window. Jared rolls it down. "Hey, get in the glove box and hand me the pressure gauge."

Jared opens the compartment and is surprised at how disorganized it is compared to the rest of Jensen's stuff. Then he remembers the mad dash across the field yesterday. Now it makes sense. He digs through the box until he finds the tire gauge, then hands it out the open window to Jensen. "Thanks," he says, and disappears.

Jared rifles through the other stuff in the box. There's the manual, of course; a couple of wrenches and other small tools; some stray wires; a broken plastic keychain; and way in the back, his fingers close around glossy paper. He pulls it out. It's a photograph, slightly rumpled, of a guy about Jared's age with longish hair, a cowboy hat, and a guitar. It must be a candid shot--his eyes are turned downward and he appears to be in mid-strum. The focus of the picture seems to be his and and the instrument; everything else is various degrees of blurry. The edges of the paper are just a bit crooked, meaning that it was cut by hand. Jensen must have shot and printed it himself.

"What the hell are you doing?"

Jared nearly jumps out of his seat. "I, uh--nothing, I just--"

Jensen yanks the picture out of Jared's hand, pockets it, and takes off. Jared lets his head fall back against the headrest and closes his eyes. Of course Jared would have to screw things up just when they were starting to go really well. That's what always happens, because Jared is completely hopeless at relationships. He thought things would improve when he started dating the gender he's actually attracted to, but they haven't. And considering how long it took for Jensen to warm up to him, Jared probably undid all the progress he made in the past three days.

God, he's an idiot.

What if he can't get Jensen to trust him again? What if Jensen won't forgive him? What if--crap, what if Jensen refuses to see or speak to him again? Then he'll not only lose Jensen, but his chance at grad school as well, and then what will he do? He doesn't have any money or job prospects, and he'll lose his housing when he graduates, and then--and then--

He can't hold onto his train of thought long enough to finish it, because his chest and throat are so tight he can't breathe and little white sparks zoom around the edges of his vision. He clutches the door handle, trying to ground himself through the touch, but all he can feel are the pins and needles in his fingers. Sweat drips down his nose and cheeks, soaking into his shirt collar, and the crushing pain in his chest doubles him over. This can't be happening, he can't have survived a freaking tornado only to die now in a car that isn't even moving because his own brain is trying to suffocate him.

"Are you all right?" The voice is gentle, female. He looks up to see a kind-looking woman in a daisy-print scrub shirt just outside his window. "Do you need help?" He shakes his head and the movement makes the world tilt crazily, forcing him to grab the window frame for balance. She places her hand over his. "Are you having a panic attack?" she asks quietly.

"Y-yeah," he gasps.

"Okay," she replies with a small, sympathetic smile. Her placid strength is reassuring, and he can feel the vise around his chest loosening slightly. "When I squeeze your hand, try to breathe in through your nose and push the air out through your mouth like you're blowing out a candle. Can you do that?" He nods. She presses firmly on his hand and he tries to do what she said, but only manages the first part. She waits a beat and squeezes again. This time he has a little more success. She repeats the process until his breathing has slowed nearly to normal.

"Is someone traveling with you?" she asks once he's calmed down.

Jared nods. "But he's mad at me. He left and I don't know where he went."

She glances over her shoulder. "I think I might." She steps aside and points to the side of the building, where Jensen's sitting in the grass with his back against the wall, knee pulled up to his chest.

"He won't want to talk to me," explains Jared.

"How can you be sure?" she replies. "He looked more sad than angry to me."

Jared takes another look. She's right--with his slumped shoulders and downturned eyes, he seems more depressed than anything else. He sighs. "I guess I should try." He turns back to her and smiles. "Thank you so much. I mean, you don't even know who I am."

She grins. "It goes with the uniform. Take care." She squeezes his hand one last time and walks away.

Jared rolls the window back up and pulls the keys out of the ignition, then locks the truck and heads across the lot. "Hey," he says softly, not wanting to startle Jensen.

"Leave me alone," he mutters without looking up.

"Please don't shut me out again," says Jared, crouching down to Jensen's eye level. "I shouldn't have gone snooping through your things, and I'm sorry." Jensen shrugs. Jared sits down next to him  
and gestures at the picture in Jensen's hand. "Who is that?"

Jensen doesn't answer right away. Finally, just as Jared considers giving up and going back to the truck, Jensen speaks. "His name was Christian, but it was just Chris to most of us."

The name sounds familiar. Jared thinks back to his earliest fragmented conversations with Jensen. "He was your roommate. The one who got you into chasing."

Jensen swallows hard and nods. "Yeah. We weren't just roommates, though. Not after the first semester of freshman year, anyway."

"You were together?" Jared refuses to acknowledge the little rush of heat behind his eyes as jealousy.

Jensen's breath hitches. "You could say that." He breaks into a crooked half-smile. "At first we couldn't stand each other. Fought like tigers over every little thing. One night his friend Steve locked us in his van and said he wouldn't let us out till we made nice or killed each other. He came back half an hour later and found us making out in the backseat."

Jared grins. "Bet you scarred him for life."

"Probably did." Jensen tilts the picture toward Jared. "He used to play and sing in this band, him and Steve and two of their friends from home. They would play at this little hole-in-the-wall place way outta town where no one ever carded. Couldn't even tell you how many Saturday nights we spent there, drinkin' crappy watered-down beer and cheap-ass whiskey and fuckin' around with the guitars." Jared wishes he had his voice recorder so he could capture the way Jensen's natural Texas drawl gets more pronounced with every word.

"So what happened?" Jared prompts gently.

Jensen takes a deep breath. "It was finals week our junior year. I went back to our apartment after my chem final and Chris barely let me in the door, he was so excited about this storm he was tracking. We jumped in his car and took off for the Bailey Turnpike. There was a huge meso developing just down the road. It dropped a massive wedge tornado--an F5, the third most destructive tornado in history. We were following it up the Bailey toward Oklahoma City when a semi lost control and hit our car."

Jared's eyes widen. "The car accident."

Jensen nods, the movements stilted and jerky. "They said...they thought Chris was killed instantly."

"Oh God," Jared breathes. "That's--I'm so sorry." He moves to put his arm around Jensen, but Jensen pushes him away.

"I didn't find out till two days later," Jensen goes on, his voice flat and lifeless. "My leg got shattered in the crash, so they had to do a shitload of surgery to try and put it back together. They put in this thing called a fixator--a bunch of metal bars and pins and screws that hold the pieces of bone together." He's staring at the picture, but his eyes are unfocused and distant. "I got this real bad infection a couple days later, and that's when they had to cut my leg off or I would've died." His hand drifts to the end of his stump. "I guess I almost died anyway. Jeff had already started looking at coffins and everything."

"God, Jensen..." Tears start to burn in the corners of Jared's eyes. Jared's own problems seem so silly and unimportant in comparison. He can't imagine what it must have been like to suffer two enormous losses in so short a time. Hell, he's impressed that Jensen can even function. In a kind of sick way, Jared envies him that strength. He knows if it were him in that position, he'd have just given up and died rather than trying to face the world after that kind of trauma.

Jared reaches for Jensen's hand, which is still absently massaging his stump, and is heartened when Jensen allows him to twine his fingers with Jensen's and squeeze his hand. "I wish there was something I could do," he says quietly. "It must be hard to be reminded of that every minute of every day."

Jensen shrugs. "You get used to it."

"I don't think I could," replies Jared. "It amazes me, how strong you are." He leans and nudges Jensen's shoulder with his own.

Jensen doesn't reply. He shifts his gaze from the photograph to Jared's hand in his. They stay like that for a while, Jared offering as much silent support as Jensen will let him. Finally, Jensen pulls his hand away and takes his phone out of his pocket. "We gotta get going if we're gonna see anything today."

"Okay with me," says Jared. He gets to his feet and helps Jensen up, handing him his crutches after taking a moment to slide his hands over the cold metal to the hard rubber handgrip. Somehow that feels more intimate than the act last night. Jensen's hand brushes his as he moves to take the crutches back and Jensen's eyes snap up to meet Jared's. Jared leans in and presses a light, chaste kiss to Jensen's lips. Jensen's eyes soften and his lips quirk up into a tiny hint of a smile.

They're going to be okay. Jared sighs with relief and follows Jensen to the truck.

They cross into Nebraska and stop in Holdrege about three hours later to eat and check data. Jensen points the truck northwest to a particularly desolate area with a lot of lakes and dense stretches of hills that disrupt the grid pattern of rural roads crisscrossing most of the Great Plains. They watch the clouds in silence for the most part, both of them still recovering from the emotional upheaval of the morning. A promising tower develops after about an hour, but Jensen doesn't like the positioning--it's over a large reservoir with few access roads. "We'll keep an eye on it," he promises.

Eventually, the storm starts to shift eastward. "There's only major road out here, and we're on it," says Jensen. "I don't want to go on the back roads unless we have to."

"So what does that mean for us?"

"It means we're gonna park our asses on 23 and hope it goes south instead of north."

In an unexpected stroke of luck, the storm does start moving southeast. "Looks like it's gonna parallel our route pretty nicely," Jensen announces with a smile. "Don't get much better than that."  
Jared has to agree. The storm, or _meso_ , as Jensen calls it (an abbreviation of "mesocyclone," the term for an area of rotation inside a supercell), looks a lot like the first one he chased with Jensen. It's got that upside-down cake structure, where little ridges at the base of the rotating clouds fan out like the bottom of a bell, clearly marking three distinct tiers: the dark gray anvil, or top layer, where the rotation begins; the middle, which is a light gunmetal gray as opposed to black and about a third of the height of the tier above it; and the wall cloud at the bottom, a dense mass only half the width of the middle tier but three times as dark, to the point that it appears to be pure black.

Jensen's moving around, taking pictures from different angles. "This is it," he says. "This is the one we've been waiting for."

"You think we'll see a tornado?"

"I'd say more than one. This thing's got a lotta power behind it." Jensen turns off his camera and gestures for Jared to get back in the truck. Once inside, he takes the camcorder out of its dash mount and turns it on. He flips down the LCD screen and puts it back on the mount. "You ever used one of these before?"

"No." Jared leans forward and looks at it. Shouldn't be that hard.

Jensen points to a small red button. "That's the record button. I'll tell you when to start recording. You've gotta keep as much of the storm as you can on the screen at all times." He indicates a set of buttons on top of the unit. "This is your zoom and focus. If you can, keep the whole storm in the frame. If not, look for the very lowest cloud and center it. Think you can handle that?"

Jared nods. "Yeah, I think so."

"Good." Jensen sits back in his seat. "You have to really pay attention to get a good picture. That screen's pretty small, and it can be hard to see smaller tornadoes on it. That's why you should really keep the whole storm on the screen at all times, so you don't miss anything." He puts the truck in gear. "Once we get out on the road, center the wall cloud in the frame and try to keep it there."

It's surprisingly hard work filming the storm. Though the dash mount helps immensely, it still takes most of Jared's concentration to keep the storm positioned where Jensen wants it while also watching the storm through the window so he'll have some idea of where a tornado might drop. It doesn't help that there's a band of rain and hail in the very center of the storm that Jensen warned him might hide a tornado if one forms. It shows up on the camera as a tiny smudge of gray under the oppressive black wall cloud.

They round a shallow curve and Jared adjusts the camera. Jensen whoops and Jared snaps his head up to see a thick, straight rope emerge from behind the rain band. "Is that a tornado?" Jared shouts over the near-constant roll of thunder.

"'Course it is! You getting it?"

Jared edges the zoom button forward to make the tornado even bigger on the screen. "Yeah, I got it." The tornado looks unusual; instead of the typical funnel shape, narrowing at the bottom, this tornado has perfectly straight sides like a roll of coins. Wisps of dust and debris pirouette around the bottom of the tornado as it surges across the barren plain. Slowly it moves to the right, but it seems to be getting wider as it goes. All of a sudden, there's an explosion of rocks and dirt clods at the base. "What was that?" he yells.

"It just hit the road," Jensen answers. "It'll happen again in about thirty seconds."

Sure enough, Jensen's right. Thick clumps of debris spin out and shatter upon hitting the ground, sending up little plumes of black vapor that swirl around the funnel like smoke. About a minute later, there's a bright blue flash and a loud popping sound. "Power flash," Jensen explains. "It just hoovered up some power lines." More power flashes start to occur rhythmically every couple of seconds. "Oh, shit," says Jensen, looking at the GPS.

"What?"

"The road those power lines are on goes into Smithfield," replies Jensen. "If it stays on course, it's gonna go straight through the center of town."

Jared's stomach clenches. "And then what?"

"If they're lucky, it'll shift a few degrees northward and just knock down a coupla houses on the outskirts."

"And if they're not?" Jared asks, even though he doesn't want to know the answer.

"Then say goodbye to Smithfield," Jensen answers. "Some towns are so small that an F3 or 4 can wipe 'em off the map in a matter of minutes."

Jared swallows hard. Jensen presses his lips together in a grim line and slows the truck a little. Jared realizes he's holding his breath, praying for the tornado to change course and spare those people, however few of them there are.

There's a great haloed burst of blue light that sends sparks flying like a firecracker.  
"Transformer," announces Jensen.

Jared stares in horror as the tornado charges forward, never wavering from its doomsday course for a second. Jensen pulls the truck to the side of the road just as the debris cloud around the tornado's tip thickens. There's another power flash, this one accompanied by a horrific snapping sound like the crack of a ten-ton whip. The plume of debris whirling around the bottom of the funnel takes on a pale reddish cast. Jensen winces. "That pink stuff is insulation," he shouts over the roar of the wind.

"That's bad, isn't it?" Jared yells back.

Another power flash, this one tinged purple from the insulation, and the resulting crack is so loud Jared feels it in his body.

"Yeah," Jensen yells over the din. "Yeah, that's bad."

"You know first aid?" Jensen asks.

"Like, Red Cross first aid? No," says Jared. Jensen nods and puts the truck in gear. "Wait, you're not--you want to go _in there_?"

"Why the hell not?" Jensen glares at him and steers the truck back onto the road, which is littered with rocks and tree branches. "Storm's passed over; 'long as you stick close to me, you'll be fine."  
"What about all the power lines that came down? There could be fires, floods, you don't know!" Jared argues. It's not that he doesn't want to help these people, not at all, but it can't possibly be safe in there."

Jensen carefully maneuvers the truck around some fallen branches and looks Jared straight in the eye. "You said you trusted me."

"I do," Jared replies softly.

"Then prove it." Jensen guides the truck over a particularly thick tree limb and into the town proper.

It quickly becomes clear that they'll have to make most of the journey on foot. Jensen parks the truck behind a Honda Accord with all its windows broken and retrieves his camera bag. He changes the lens to a shorter one and slings the camera around his neck. "Come on," he says, grabbing his crutches from the back.

Jared climbs out of the truck. It feels like he's stepping into a war zone. All around them are damaged cars and houses, most with roof and window damage. They pass a house with a car sticking out of it, and a car flattened by a downed power pole. The ground is littered with broken glass and wood splinters, and puffs of insulation rain down on them as they walk. The air is hazy with dust and ash and there's an acrid scent to the air. Jared's never seen anything like it. After the clamor of the storm, it seems eerily silent except for the click of Jensen's shutter as he photographs the carnage.

They come across the battered remains of a house, pieces of its frame fighting to remain upright. Siding and shingles are scattered in heaps around the yard, and scraps of fabric tenaciously cling to chunks of wood and plastic. Jensen takes several shots from different angles, and just as he's about  
to move on, he frowns and turns around. "You hear something?"

"No." Jared takes a step closer. "What did it sound like?"

"It was high." He moves forward and uses the tip of one crutch to push aside some boards. Now Jared hears it, a high-pitched whine that sounds like an animal. Jensen glances around and shifts to the left, then uses his crutch to lift a piece of drywall. A little Lhasa Apso who couldn't be much more than a few months old skitters out from under the board and shakes itself off. It's not bleeding or limping, so it's probably just a little dazed.

Jared crouches down and puts his hand out. "Hey, you okay?" he asks softly, gesturing for the little white dog to come closer. It bounds over and sniffs at his fingers, then nudges its head under  
Jared's hand. Jared chuckles and rubs its--her?--head. "That's a good girl," he croons, letting her lick his fingers. He looks up at Jensen. "What should we do with her?"

Jensen glances over his shoulder. "Town like this, the emergency shelter would be in the biggest building, probably a church or municipal office." He moves a few paces backwards and tries to peer down the road. "Grab her and we'll try and find someone who knows where that would be."

Jared extends his other hand and gives her an experimental pat on the back. She wags her tail so hard her body quivers under his hand and lets out a little yip of affection. He grins. "Come on, let's see if we can find your mommy and daddy, okay?" He gently scoops her up and rests her on his shoulder. She immediately starts licking his cheek and chin.

Jensen laughs. "Looks like someone found a friend." He reaches out and Jared brings her over so Jensen can pet her. "Didn't know you were a dog lover."

"I used to volunteer at a shelter when I was in high school," Jared replies. "Guess you could say I'm a big softie. If it has four legs, I'll probably love it."

Jensen's fingers close around a dirty strip of nylon. He turns it around until he locates a bone-shaped tag. "Her name's Sadie," says Jensen. He leans in to look closer. "There's a number on there too. Not that that'll do us any good right now."

Jared grins. "Hiya, Sadie." She wriggles happily in his arms, her tiny tail tapping his ribs when she wags it. He scratches behind an ear and she closes her eyes in blissful contentment. Then he hears the telltale click of the shutter.

"I should sell that shot to Hallmark," grumbles Jensen, but Jared can tell he's fighting not to smile. "It's sickening."

Jared chuckles. "You think we're adorable. Just admit it."

"Yeah, whatever." Jensen pulls back and carefully turns around. "We gotta find her owners. They're probably going nuts."

Jared's face falls. The reality of the situation hits him like a punch in the gut. How big an asshole is he, laughing and joking around while these people are huddled in shelters after losing everything they have? Jared cuddles Sadie closer. Jensen was right, it is sickening, but not the way he meant. He picks his way out of the wreckage and joins Jensen on the road. "Where to now?"

Jensen shrugs. "Your guess is as good as mine."

After about twenty minutes of walking, they finally run into another person. "Oh, you found the Cohens' puppy! Thank goodness, little Lacey was just crushed that they had to leave without her."  
"Do you know where they might be?" asks Jensen.

"We've got an emergency shelter set up at the post office," he replies. "I'm headed there myself. I'm the mayor, Fred Lehne."

"Nice to meet you," Jensen and Jared both murmur.

"You boys storm chasers?" he asks as they fall into step together.

Jensen nods. "Guilty as charged." He carefully navigates around a shredded car tire--a backyard tire swing, if the broken chains on the ground are any indication.

The post office turns out to be a small shed on the outskirts of town, the only place the tornado seems to have spared. People are milling around, sitting on lawn chairs and folding chairs that were probably collected from the few houses still standing. Some kids are sitting on a tarp on the ground, and another tarp is strung up like a canopy from the side of the building. The kids look up as the three of them approach and a little brunette girl's face lights up. "Sadie!" she shrieks, jumping up and running over. "You found her!" She whirls around. "Daddy! Come quick! They found our puppy!"

Jared kneels down and places Sadie on the ground. The little girl drops to the ground and Sadie immediately jumps on her and licks her face. The girl giggles and pets every inch of Sadie's body that she can reach. Jared hears the shutter click several times.

A dark-haired man who looks to be about Jensen's age comes over and beams at the little girl. "I can't thank you enough," he says, barely able to take his eyes off the girl and her beloved pet. "There just wasn't enough time, everything happened so fast..."

"We're thrilled we could help," Jared says.

The man kneels down and ruffles his daughter's hair with one hand and the puppy's head with the other. "My two favorite girls, together again," he murmurs, his words punctuated by the click of the shutter.

Fred shakes Jared's and Jensen's hands and thanks them for stopping to help. As they make their way back through the damage path, Jensen snaps photo after photo, capturing the wrecked homes and cars as well as the uniformed rescue workers who wade through the ruins with fire extinguishers and medical kits. The more pictures Jensen takes, the more Jared starts to feel like they're intruding on a stranger's funeral. He's not sure this kind of grief is meant to be shared with outsiders, let alone documented for their edification.

"What gives you the right to take all these pictures?" asks Jared as they're walking back to the truck. "It's not your town. It's not your life, your pain. You act like this is some kind of show, like it's entertainment. These people are real, and they just lost _everything_. You're callous, and worse, you're selfish."

Jensen stops and smacks Jared's shin with his crutch. "Now wait a minute," he growls. "You're acting like--like I get off on this or something. You think I'm happy about this? Fuck no. I'd be thrilled if tornadoes never passed through populated areas. But they do. That's life. Whether I take these pictures or not, this town's toast. Nothin' I can do about that. But if I put these pictures on a website, or send them to a newspaper, now people in the next town, the next county, the next state are gonna know about it."

"What's so great about that?" replies Jared.

Jensen glares at him. "Because folks out here, they know it could happen to them next. Hell, it could happen to them tomorrow and then again five years later. And they know that if that happened, they'd need a hell of a lot of help. So they help the people who need it, when they need it. They donate food to the food banks and clothes to the Salvation Army and money to the Red Cross. 'Cause if it were them--and any day now it could be--they'd want those folks to do the same. Out here, people take care of each other."

Jared snorts. "God, I wish that were true," he mutters.

"What was that?"

"Nothing."

Jensen checks them in at the Holiday Inn in Kearney after he determines that the majority of chasers are staying elsewhere. Technically, their chase was successful, but Jared doesn't particularly feel like celebrating. Jensen doesn't seem to either, so they order burgers from room service and flip channels till they find a movie that both of them have seen a million times.

When they're finished eating, Jensen gets up. "I'm gonna take a shower."

"Okay," replies Jared. He's not even in the mood to get in there with him. He has his field journal open on his laptop, but he can't make himself start writing. If he writes it down, it will be real--permanent--in a way that he just doesn't have the strength to deal with right now. He hadn't realized it, but he's bone-deep exhausted, too many nights of tossing and turning in a bed not his own. His knees and tailbone ache from sitting in the truck for most of his waking hours three days in a row, and his neck is stiff and sore from being so tense while he was recording the tornado.

He wonders how Jensen does this for weeks, months, at a time, year after year. He thinks it must have something to do with Chris, because he can't imagine how Jensen could even face a tornado without breaking down after the accident, let alone seek them out on a regular basis. His mind drifts back to Friday, the way Jensen's shirt was soaked with sweat and he was shaking when they got up close to that funnel. If he was so scared, why did he put himself in its path? To prove to Jared--and maybe even himself--that he could do it? To prove he was man enough to take on a tornado and win? Was it as reckless as it seemed, or had Jensen intended to put himself in harm's way all along? If that were the case, why take Jared along with him?

He closes his laptop and sets it on the bedside table. He can't answer any of those questions without actually talking to Jensen, which he's too tired to do tonight, and all he really wants to do is stop thinking so freaking much.

The movie ends and a crappy romantic comedy begins, so Jared flips the channels until he finds a rerun of _Family Guy_. He hadn't realized it was that late. He can't believe he just saw his first tornado two days ago. This weekend feels like it lasted a month.

Jensen emerges in a sweet-scented fog and climbs into bed beside Jared. "You look beat."

"I am." Jared rolls on his side to face Jensen. "How do you do this all the time?"

He shrugs. "It gets easier. You weren't even doing the hard part."

"I thought going through town was the hard part." Jared can still feel the prickle of dust and ash on his skin. "Is that why you don't believe in God? Because He lets things like that happen to good people?"

Jensen settles back against the pillows. "Yeah, pretty much." He picks at a loose thread on the coverlet. "My mom went to church every Sunday. She prayed when she woke up, when we ate, with my brother and me when she put us to bed...God couldn't have asked for a more loyal servant. And what did she get in return? My older brother got killed by a drunk driver two months after his sixteenth birthday, which made my dad start drinking, and when he'd come home off a bender he'd beat me and my little sister and then go after her." Jensen's voice shakes. "If there is a God, and he didn't help her when she got down on her knees and begged him to, then he's a fucking asshole and we're better off without him."

"God, Jensen..." Jared doesn't even know what to say. He tentatively reaches for Jensen's shoulder; when Jensen doesn't immediately push him away, Jared crawls over and wraps him in the tightest hug he can. Jensen stiffens at first, but after a few seconds he reaches up and returns the embrace. "I'm sorry," Jared whispers in his ear.

When they finally separate, Jensen clenches his jaw so tight it looks painful, and his eyes are a little too shiny in the lamplight. Jared takes his hand and twines their fingers together. "If I were you, I think I'd feel the same way," he admits. "Your God kinda sounds like the God my parents believe in. They believe anything that makes you feel good comes from the devil, especially sex. Apparently God wants everybody to be alone and miserable."

"Sounds like your parents are on to something," says Jensen.

Jared takes a deep breath. "My parents sent us to this private Christian school when we were little that wouldn't let us do anything fun. We couldn't listen to music or dance or play games that weren't based on the Bible, and we had an hour of Bible study at the beginning and end of every day, even in kindergarten."

"Christ, what a bunch of tightasses," mutters Jensen, rolling his eyes.

Jared snorts. "Yeah, pretty much." He lies down on his side and props himself up on one elbow. "Anyway, the high school we went to was a little less rigid, but not by much. We had mandatory youth group three days a week after school and before Sunday evening service. When I was in tenth grade, UTSA put on a production of that play about Matthew Shepard." He closes his eyes, not wanting Jensen to see how close he is to tears himself. "Our youth pastor came in to our meeting that week and wanted us to help him protest at the school. He talked about how gay people were everywhere and they looked 'just like us' and we had to be extra vigilant not to 'succumb to their influence'." Jared rolls his eyes. "He talked about them like they were some kind of cult, trying to lure kids off the street and brainwash them. I asked him what was so bad about them and he lectured us for half an hour about homosexuality being a sin and gay people were put on earth to tempt good Christians and lead them astray and all this other crap."

Jensen shakes his head. "Gimme a fucking break."

"Yeah, tell me about it." Jared runs a hand through his hair, which still feels gritty from the insulation dust. "After that he told my parents that I was 'one of them' and if they didn't want me to burn in hell, they had to send me to this special camp for 'counseling'. Ever seen _But I'm a Cheerleader_?"

"Oh man, it was that kind of camp?"

"Yeah." Jared lets out a humorless laugh. "If I wasn't gay when I went in there, I sure as hell would've been by the time I got out. It was about as ridiculous as the movie." He swallows hard. "But the worst part was, my parents never even asked me if I was gay. They just assumed that if I didn't automatically think gay people were evil, I had to be one." His breath hitches. "I mean, they turned out to be right, but they're my parents. They're supposed to stick up for me."

Jensen squeezes Jared's hand. "Sounds like neither of ours are gonna win Parents of the Year anytime soon."

"Yeah, really." Jared clears his throat. "After I came home, they went nuts. They took the door off my bedroom, they wouldn't let me be alone in a room with my sister...they wouldn't even let me sit at the dinner table at Thanksgiving and Christmas. They made me eat downstairs in the den, alone."

Jensen's eyes widen. "You're kidding."

"I wish." Jensen tugs on Jared's hand and Jared fits his head into the curve of Jensen's shoulder. "Long story short, the day I turned eighteen, I got in my truck, drove to Penn State, and haven't said a word to any of them since."

"That's gotta be tough," says Jensen. "My mom took my sister and left when I was eleven, and two years later my dad disappeared. I couldn't talk to them even if I wanted to. If I didn't have Jeff and Sam, I don't know what I would've done."

"They seemed really nice," replies Jared. "Especially Sam."

"Sam's the best," agrees Jensen. "After the accident, they took me in. She took me to physical therapy, forced me to see a counselor even though I didn't want to, eventually found me the house I'm in and set up the job at Jeff's garage. When it comes right down to it, she probably saved my life."

"I'll have to thank her for that, then," says Jared, tilting his head up to kiss Jensen's jaw.

"You'll get your chance," promises Jensen. "But we've got a long trip ahead of us before that."

"How long will it take to get back?"

"'Bout eight and a half hours, depending on traffic."

Jared groans. "I swear, there's gonna be a permanent ass-print in your passenger seat."

"It'll survive," replies Jensen. He reaches over and turns off the bedside lamp. "It'll always remind me of you."

It's a long drive back to Oklahoma. They start at dawn to avoid the morning rush in Wichita and the evening rush in Oklahoma City and end up taking a short nap in Jared's hotel room before heading down to Jensen's house in Purcell. Jensen lives in a less prosperous neighborhood than Jeff and Sam, but his own house, a white one-story bungalow with blue trim, is well-maintained and neatly kept.

When Jensen turns on the lights in the living room, Jared's jaw drops. Collages of framed photographs fully cover two of the interior walls, each picture carefully placed in an offset pattern based on its size. Panoramic landscapes and close-ups of plants and animals are interspersed with all sorts of weather photos, from tranquil sunrises, sunsets, and rainbows to furious bolts of lightning, tornadoes, and dramatically lit supercells. It's obviously the culmination of years of work, and it's amazing.

"God, Jensen, these should be in art galleries," says Jared. "Please tell me you don't just keep them locked away in here."

"No, I sell them when I can," replies Jensen. "Mostly to magazines or book publishers, but sometimes the Sunday papers'll buy one or two, and the state tourism board used a couple on those postcards they sell at rest stops."

Jared steps closer to examine a photo of a lake ringed by autumn foliage. The image is so vivd that Jared can practically feel the sun on his neck and hear the gentle lapping of the waves.

"Kitchen's through here," says Jensen, waving him over to the other side of the room. Jared follows Jensen through the doorway and into a room unlike any he's ever seen. The entire room--walls, cabinets, refrigerator, and tile backsplash--form one giant painted mural. The picture starts with the sun rising over a golden pasture, continues into a midday seascape, and ends with an urban skyline glittering under the midnight sky. Jared has to turn a full 360 degrees to take in the entire design. He can't even imagine how long it took to make.

[ ](http://bflyw.net/mural/index.html)

"You painted this? All of it?"

"No, not all of it," answers Jensen. "A contractor friend of Jeff's did the top third of each wall, where I couldn't reach. He helped tint all the custom colors, too. But the design is all mine."

"This is--" Jared can't even find the words. "Why are you still working for your uncle? You're way too talented to just be doing this as a hobby."

Jensen shrugs. "If I did it as work, it wouldn't be fun anymore. I like it too much to wanna ruin it that way."

Jared shakes his head. "Do you know how many people would kill for this kind of talent?"

"Well, then, they should get their asses to art school," says Jensen. "What do you think I went to college for?"

Jared decides to quit while he's ahead. "You said something about dinner..."

Jensen chuckles. "Figures that'd be the part you remember." He opens the freezer and takes out a plastic bag. "It'll be about forty-five minutes. Why don't you go get your laptop and work on your notes?"

"Good idea," agrees Jared. Jensen tosses him the keys to the truck.

Half an hour later, the smells wafting in from the kitchen make Jared's mouth water. When Jensen finally calls him into the dining room, he's so hungry it hurts. However, what gets Jared's attention first is the gorgeous centerpiece on the table, which appears to be a handcrafted ceramic candelabra. Rising from a central ring base are six candle cups on stems wrapped with silver and gold vines. The cups are made of glass and painted in shades of red, silver, and gold. The glowing candles throw intricate patterns of color onto the pristine china plates and crystal goblets. The whole effect is stunning and Jared is once again in awe of Jensen's artistic talent.

Jensen comes back using only one crutch and pushing a wheeled tray holding a skillet and a large bowl of pasta. He sets a chargrilled chicken breast on Jared's plate and another on his own, then dishes out fettuccine with alfredo sauce.

"Wow, this looks great," says Jared, smiling. "You didn't have to go to all this trouble. Thank you."

Even in the reddish glow of the candles, Jared can see Jensen blushing. "Well, I don't really get the chance to use this stuff much."

Jared tries the chicken. It's juicy and perfectly spiced and Jared can't help the almost orgasmic moan he lets out upon tasting it. "Where did you learn to cook like this?"

"Sam sent me to cooking class when I was recovering," Jensen answers quietly. "She wanted me to get out and be with people and she said that cooking was art too."

"Well, _your_ cooking is, anyway," replies Jared. "Seriously, this is better than any restaurant I've ever been to."

"Well, it's nice to get someone else's opinion for once," says Jensen. "I mean, there's no point making a fancy candlelight dinner for yourself."

"Well, I'm glad I could share it with you," Jared murmurs, locking eyes with Jensen over the candles.

Jensen beams. "I am too."

After dinner, Jared helps Jensen clear the table and wash the dishes before they retire to Jensen's bedroom. When Jensen turns on the light, the opposite wall catches Jared's eye first; it's painted to resemble a Mondrian composition. All the furniture is black, each of the remaining walls is painted a different primary color, and the bedspread and lamp are red. The window is on the yellow wall and has blue curtains. A few black-and-white photos in black frames sit on the dresser, which is black except for the white top and knobs. The carpet and ceiling are white as well. "I wouldn't have pegged you as a minimalist."

"I'm not, exactly," says Jensen. "I saw a similar design in a magazine and thought it looked cool."

Jared nods. "I like it."

Jensen's eyes slide over Jared's entire body and he grins wickedly. "You know, those clothes really clash with the whole room." He moves forward and tugs at Jared's belt. "Guess you'll just have to get out of 'em."

Jared steps back and unbuckles his belt. "And what's in it for me?"

"My dick in your ass," Jensen growls, low and feral, and the tone of voice alone gets Jared halfway hard. He reaches backwards and turns off the light, leaving only a thin shaft of moonlight to illuminate the room. He crutches past Jared, tapping Jared's ass with the tip of one crutch. "More stripping, less thinking."

Jared quickly sheds his clothing and climbs on the bed as Jensen does the same. The last thing Jensen removes is the pant leg covering his stump, and now it's clear why he turned off the light. Jensen lies down facing him and slides a hand down Jared's back to his ass. He dips a finger into the cleft, sending shivers down Jared's spine. "You ever done this before?"

"A couple times," Jared answers. "Not like this, though."

"You're smart, you should learn quick," says Jensen in that rough, husky voice that turns Jared on like nothing else. "In the drawer, beside you."

Jared rolls over and opens the drawer. Right in front he finds a box of condoms and lube. He fishes out a condom and hands it and the lube to Jensen. Jensen sets the condom on the pillow between them and flips open the tube of lube. "You're nervous, aren't you?" he asks.

"A little," Jared replies.

"Well, just relax. Leave everything to me," rasps Jensen. "I'm gonna make you come so hard you forget your fuckin' name." With that, Jared finds himself suddenly, painfully hard.

Next thing Jared knows, Jensen's tongue plunges past his lips just as Jensen's slick finger slips past his opening. The twin sensations battle for his attention--the heat in his mouth and the cool burn in his ass. Jensen's tongue explores every inch of Jared's mouth as Jensen's finger dances around Jared's hole. When Jensen slides another finger in and starts to delicately stretch him, Jared has to break the kiss so he can try to remember how to breathe. Jensen's touch is firm but tender, just like Jensen himself, and he obviously cares as much about Jared's pleasure as his own.

And what a pleasure it is. Jensen presses his lips to Jared's throat and circles Jared's pulse point with the tip of his tongue as he twists his fingers inside Jared's hole, bringing him ever closer to the edge. Jensen nips at the hollow of his neck and crooks his fingers just so at the same time and stars bloom in Jared's vision. Jensen inserts another finger and licks a trail up Jared's throat to his jaw. "Just relax and breathe," Jensen whispers, his hot breath tickling Jared's jaw. He nibbles Jared's earlobe, making the hair on the back of his neck stand on end, and nuzzles Jared's cheek with his own. "This is all about you."

Jensen plucks the condom from the pillow and nudges Jared's chin with his nose. "Little help here?"

Jared carefully tears the wrapper open and presses it to Jensen's cock. Jensen rolls it down and spreads his fingers inside Jared. "Can I?"

"Please," Jared gasps. He squeezes his eyes shut and relaxes his muscles the way he was taught.  
He's so ready he could cry.

Jensen enters Jared with the utmost care; even so, Jared has to force himself to relax and breathe through the burn. It's been a long time since he's done this, and Jensen's definitely not small. Jensen eases further in and the burn slowly starts to cool. "You okay?"

Jared nods. "Yeah, yeah." He presses back against Jensen, forcing him further in. Jensen thrusts once, carefully, and when Jared doesn't protest, he does it again. "Tha'ss good, don't stop," he murmurs.

Jensen grasps Jared's hips and starts to fuck him in earnest. Jared rocks his hips in time, but when Jensen hits _the_ spot, Jared stutters and loses the rhythm, clenching down on Jensen and eliciting a deep, throaty moan. Jensen thrusts harder, gripping Jared's hips hard enough to leave bruises, and when Jensen hits home three times in quick succession, Jared comes so hard that tiny white sparks explode in front of his eyes. A rush of liquid heat lets him know that Jensen has achieved his own release, and Jensen carefully separates from him and disposes of the condom.

"You were perfect," Jensen whispers, his lips just barely brushing Jared's ear. He kisses a trail across Jared's cheek to his lips and seals their mouths together.

Jared cards his fingers through Jensen's damp hair. "All thanks to you."

The next day, they leave for Tulsa around midmorning. Jensen plans a route that doesn't take them anywhere near Oklahoma City so as to avoid city traffic. Jared likes the less direct route. They drive through small towns and scenic landscapes rather than overdeveloped urban neighborhoods. He's a little surprised by how dense the wooded areas are; he'd assumed the Great Plains was just that--endless untouched plains of wild grasses dotted here and there with grazing pastures and farmsteads. He hadn't expected forests and lakes mixed in with the wide swaths of virgin land.

It takes them about three hours to get to the Tulsa metro area. Jensen immediately heads for a little diner in Redfork that he says is "the real deal." When they pull into the parking lot, Jensen groans. Jared follows his gaze to a TV news van. "You know those guys?"

Jensen snorts. "'Team Tulsa'? Yeah, I've run into 'em a couple times."

"You don't like them?"

"Nobody likes them." Jensen guides the truck into a parking space several rows away from the van. "Their heads are so big you gotta wonder how they fit through doorways. They're arrogant jackasses that think they're God's gift to storm chasing."

Jared unbuckles his seat belt. "I probably shouldn't say this, but I thought the same thing about you at first."

"You didn't exactly catch me at the best time," replies Jensen. "You flew in on the tenth anniversary of the accident."

Jared's eyes widen. "Oh God, really?" Jensen nods. "I had no idea. You should have said something--I would've changed my plans."

"I wanted to," admits Jensen. "But Misha convinced me not to."

"How do you two know each other, anyway?" asks Jared. He's been dying to find out.

"Well, we met when he was my RA freshman year," says Jensen. "He and Chris butted heads a couple times that year, 'cause he'd go to parties and then stumble in around 3 in the morning drunk off his ass and do stupid shit. One time he set the microwave on fire, set off the fire alarm. We all got evacuated and had to stand around in the rain for two hours before they'd let us back in."

Jared raises an eyebrow. "And you _liked_ him?"

"Not then, I didn't," answers Jensen, chuckling. "He mellowed out after we got together. But anyway, Misha got promoted to RD the next year and he became the faculty advisor for the gay-straight alliance. He talked me into helping them out with an art project for National Coming Out Day, and I actually kinda liked the other kids in the group, so I kept going to the meetings." His eyes darken. "The day of the accident, he heard the weather reports and figured Chris and I went after one of the storms. I guess he tried to call me and got a weird message because my phone was broken, so he came out looking for us. I guess the way the accident happened, it was hard to see it from the road at first, so no one reported it. Misha was the first person to see us and call for help. If he hadn't, I probably wouldn't be here."

"Oh, wow," breathes Jared.

"He was the first person I saw when I woke up," Jensen adds. "I don't remember much, but I know he stayed with me until Jeff and Sam could get there."

Suddenly, it all makes sense. "So, you pretty much owe him your life," says Jared. "And you only agreed to this because he asked you to do it as a favor."

"Guilty as charged." Jensen grins. "But now I'm glad I did."

"I'm glad you did, too," replies Jared, leaning across the seat to kiss Jensen.

Jensen cups Jared's cheek and returns the kiss. A moment later, his stomach growls loudly and Jared can't stop himself from laughing. When Jensen sits back, he's laughing too. "Guess that moment's over."

Jared chuckles. "Guess so. Come on, we better get in there before you starve to death."

Inside the diner, a group of people are gathered around a table in the back. Standing next to the table is a guy in a navy-blue jacket with the TV station logo. He's pointing to something on a widescreen laptop and talking. Seated behind him are two younger guys in matching jackets. Jared nods at them. "'Team Tulsa'?"

"You got it." Jensen glances over. "Looks like class is in session. Never get that guy started; he'll lecture you to death."

Jared follows Jensen to a table next to the window. As they sit down, Jared notices one of the young TV guys eying Jensen. He tries to direct Jensen's attention to the other table. "Why's that guy staring at you?"

Jensen glances over his shoulder. "Because that's Justin."

"Justin you chased with?"

"The one and only." Jensen picks up the menu. "Just ignore them."

Jared tries to subtly sneak a look. He's glad he does, because Justin's heading right for them.  
"Too late."

"Well, well," says Justin, stepping up to their table. "Looks like you found a new partner."

"Not exactly," replies Jensen coldly. "Jared's a grad student from Penn State. He's writing a paper about storm chasing."

Justin looks Jared up and down. "Then you better come with us and talk to a _real_ storm chaser."

"Not interested, thanks," Jared tells him, eyes firmly fixed on Jensen.  
Justin rolls his eyes. "Your loss."

"Give Dick my best," sneers Jensen as Justin walks away.

"What was that all about?" Jared asks once Justin gets back to his table.

"You never asked why I don't have a partner," says Jensen. "Did you notice that all the other chasers we meet travel in pairs or groups?"

"I didn't know they all did," replies Jared. "But yeah, they do seem to stick together."  
Jensen picks up his fork and stabs his napkin. "Let's just say I don't chase alone because I want to."

"What happened?"

"Little shit told every chaser who would listen that I sent him to the wrong place because I hit on him and he turned me down." Jensen turns his fork over and digs the handle into the edge of the placemat. "He made it sound like I was the kind of gay person your pastor talked about."

"Oh God, Jensen..." Jared isn't an aggressive person by nature, but Jensen's revelation makes him want to take Justin out back and beat the snot out of him. "What did you do?"

Jensen shrugs. "Nothin' much I could do. I do my thing how I want, when I want, and every chaser in the area pretends I don't exist."

"I don't know how you do it," says Jared. "If I had your life, I don't think I'd be able to get out of bed in the morning."

"You'd learn to deal," replies Jensen. "Way I figure it, I made it out of that crash alive when Chris didn't, and every day after that I've done all the living he never got to. I owe him that much."

"You loved him," Jared murmurs. He'd suspected as much when Jensen flipped out about the picture, but the look on Jensen's face right now convinces Jared beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was right.

"More than I've ever loved anyone," Jensen says quietly. He looks up at Jared and a smile slowly creeps across his face. "Then again, I've only known you for a week and change."

Jared's breath catches. Jensen can't be saying what Jared thinks he's saying. It's just--it's not possible. No one could feel that way about Jared--he's too screwed-up, too anxious and timid and self-conscious. He doesn't deserve that kind of devotion; he's not worthy of it. Surely Jensen has to know that?

" _Jared_."

Jared snaps his head up. "What?"

"You're thinking again." Jensen smirks. "Didn't I tell you to cut that out?"

"S-sorry," Jared stammers.

Jensen's face falls. "I didn't mean to freak you out. I wasn't--I'm not saying I want a commitment ceremony or anything." He chuckles nervously. "But I think that...this thing we've got...it could really be something, if we see it through." His eyes lock on Jared's. "I _want_ to see it through."

"Me too," whispers Jared. "I mean--yeah, I do too."

Jensen beams. "That's settled, then."

The rest of the meal isn't nearly so eventful. Jensen checks the forecast and decides to head north on the turnpike. On the way they pass a DOW truck and several other chase vehicles. "I take it we're in the right place," says Jared as a different TV van speeds by on their left.

"Should be," says Jensen. "Unfortunately. I think I'm gonna get off at Claremore and try to ditch the crowd."

Jensen pulls off the main road in Chelsea to check on some satellite images. "The thing you gotta watch around here is that lake over there."

"Why?"

"Because it's well over 20 miles long and there's only one way to get across, so if you end up on the wrong side of it, you're pretty well fucked." He turns his laptop to the side so Jared can see the map. He's right--the lake is gigantic, and the only bridge is just north of the halfway point. "Too much rain and that bridge'll flood, and then you're really fucked." He takes the laptop back and taps a couple of keys. "We sit tight here, it should come right to us."

"Awesome." Jared glances out the window. Nothing but blue sky and wispy white clouds in all  
directions.

Two hours later, Jensen pulls a nickel out of his pocket. "Look up," he instructs Jared. He points to a roiling gray cloud in the distance. "There's one storm." He shifts to the left and points at another ominous-looking cloud about forty degrees to the south. "And there's another one. They're both gonna be monsters, but right now, we don't know which'll blow up bigger. So, we make a choice." He holds up the coin. "Call it in the air."

"Tails."

Jensen flips the coin and grins. "You win." He curls a hand around Jared's neck and pulls him in for a kiss. "Off we go into the wild blue yonder," he quips as they settle back into their places in the truck.

Luckily for them, the storm they chose to follow turns into a massive low-precip supercell. This one has a different appearance than the others he's seen. With this one, the wall cloud develops toward the back of the storm rather than the middle, making it look like the foot of a giant furry monster, trying to stomp out the helpless villagers of northeastern Oklahoma.

As they drive down OK-60, the storm looms larger and larger over them, until it's so dark that Jared can barely see five feet in front of them, even with the high-beams on. Thunder rolls like kettle drums above their heads, and the flashes of lightning come so quickly in succession that he doesn't know how the strobe lighting doesn't screw with Jensen's vision, because it's sure as hell screwing with his.

Jared's chest tightens. Even though they're on a major road, this doesn't seem safe. He's about to tell Jensen so when there's a burst of brilliant white light and a crack of thunder so intense that Jared's ears feel stuffed afterwards.

"We gotta pull off," yells Jensen over the din. He taps the GPS and locates a turn-off a few hundred yards ahead. _Thank God_ , Jared thinks.

When Jensen pulls the truck off the road, he nearly runs into a large heap of something. "Jesus Christ!" He opens the side window and peers out. "Shit, I think that's a car."

Jared leans forward and tries to see through the flooded windshield. "You think?"

"Yeah. I've got flares and a first-aid kit in the back," says Jensen. He pops open the console and pulls out a big Maglite and a smaller LED flashlight. He hands the LED to Jared and picks up the two-way radio. "See if anyone's awake in there. I'll call this in and set up the flares."

Jared opens the door to an honest-to-God deluge. The rain pours down so hard and is so freezing cold it actually stings his bare skin. His hair and clothes get drenched in a matter of seconds, making him shiver and break out in goosebumps. However bad it is for him, though, it has to be ten times worse for whoever's in that car. He turns on the flashlight and shines it on the hulking form. Sure enough, it's a car--a hatchback, by the looks of it. He shines the light in the intact back windshield and sees two small forms in the backseat. Oh God, he really hopes they aren't kids. He steps closer, aiming the light at the side window.

His heart sinks. They are kids--girls, one preschool-aged and one infant. The older girl jerks up when the light hits her, then covers her face and turns away from it. She's on the far side of the car, secure in a booster seat. The baby is strapped into a safety seat on the other side. Jared steps forward and tests the car door. It won't budge. Probably has one of those child-locks engaged.  
A bolt of lightning illuminates the whole scene and Jared's eyes fall on the broken front passenger window. He carefully reaches through and unlocks the back door. The older girl's panicked screams make Jared's stomach twist. God, she must be terrified.

He wrenches the back door open and holds the flashlight up to his face. "My name's Jared, and I'm here to help," he shouts.

"Mom-meeee!" wails the girl, stretching her tiny arms toward the driver's seat.

"We'll get help for your mommy," Jared promises.

Just then, something grabs his arm and he jumps. "Just me," yells Jensen. "Get them outta there. We can keep them warm and dry in the truck."

Jensen has a point. Jared shoves the flashlight in the back of his jeans and leans into the backseat. He tries to unbuckle the baby seat, but he can't figure out how it's tethered. "I can't get it!" he shouts over his shoulder.

Jensen pulls out a pocketknife and hands it over. "I'm gonna go tell 911 there's kids involved."  
Jared slashes the belts holding the baby seat in place and picks it up. The baby's sucking on a pacifier and staring at him, which he hopes means she isn't hurt. "I'm taking her somewhere safe and warm!" he informs the screaming girl, even though he doesn't think she can hear him. He hurries to the truck and sets the baby seat on the backseat. Jensen's out in the road with the radio and Jared assumes he's describing the scene to the 911 dispatcher.

As Jared tries to wrestle the other girl out of her booster seat, there's a blinding flash of blue-white light and a concussive blast of thunder that shakes the car and sends a strange jolt of heat up Jared's arm that spreads through his entire body, leaving his arms and hands tingling and his chest muscles quivering. There's an odd buzzing in his ears and his head feels fuzzy, like there's cotton wrapped around his brain. The girl claps her hands over her ears and scrunches up her face like she's wailing, but all he hears is a faint mewling. He pulls her out, seat and all, and rushes her to the truck. He shuts all the doors to keep out the rain and turns to call Jensen.

Jensen's not there.

"Jensen!" Jared screams, his own voice sounding dull and faraway. He looks down at the burning flare and a glint of light next to it catches his eye. He aims the flashlight. It's Jensen's crutch.

Jared's stomach clenches. He runs around the back of the truck and finds Jensen sprawled in the grass, completely still. He drops to his knees in the muddy grass and presses two fingers to Jensen's neck, searching for a pulse.

He doesn't find one.

[Continue to Part Five](http://sinnerforhire.livejournal.com/403171.html)


	5. Still Staring at the Same Old Sky - Part Five

 

_OhGodOhGodOhGodOhGodOhGodOhGod._

The first and last time Jared took CPR was eleventh grade, when he applied for a job as a lifeguard at a private community pool. He hopes he remembers all the steps right. He sets the flashlight on the ground next to him and aims it at Jensen's face. He tilts Jensen's chin up and sweeps a finger through his mouth to make sure there's nothing blocking his throat. He doesn't find anything, so he pinches Jensen's nose shut and gives him the two breaths.

The next part is what he's dreading. He has to do it right, or else. He rises up on his knees and threads his fingers together. _Please, God, let me do this right, I'll never ask for anything else again_. He fits his hands to the center of Jensen's chest and pushes down, pushes down, pushes down, thirty times in all. He moves over and gives Jensen two more breaths, exhaling so hard it makes him feel lightheaded. Back to compressions now. He finishes another set, does two more breaths. He presses a shaking hand to Jensen's neck.

Still nothing. Jared's chest tightens.

He doesn't know how long he goes on like that before he hears the blessed shriek of sirens in the distance. He gives Jensen more breaths, then moves to check his pulse. As his hand passes near Jensen's mouth, he feels the slightest tickle of air brush his skin. He freezes. After a long moment, he feels it again. He presses his fingers to Jensen's neck. It's weak and slow and barely tangible, but it's there. His pulse is there.

He did it.

He drops his head back and sinks back on his heels. The sirens are louder now, and he can see light out of the corner of his eye. He's never been so relieved to hear a police siren in his life.

Emergency vehicles screech to a halt several hundred yards down the road and Jared waves the flashlight to attract them. A medical bag thunks down on the ground beside him and suddenly he's being pulled back from Jensen's side. He never takes his eyes off of Jensen and the paramedics working on him, even when he's led down the road to an ambulance himself. The bright flashing lights hurt his eyes and everything sounds muffled like he's underwater. He's vaguely aware of people bustling around him, asking questions, shining things in his eyes and ears, but Jared doesn't respond to a thing. He's cold and numb and shaky and dazed and scared and...and...

The next thing he sees is white. White above him, white in front of him, white on his lap...just white, white, and more white, everywhere he looks. _Wait, this isn't--I can't be--no, no, I'm sure I'm not--_

"Sir?"

He blinks. His vision hasn't quite cleared yet, but he can make out an olive-skinned face and curly brown hair on top of a purple shirt. "Where am I?"

"You're in the emergency department at Craig General Hospital in Vinita," she answers. "Now, can you tell me your name?"

"Jared." He tries to sit up, but she puts a hand on his chest and stops him. It's then he realizes that he's in dry clothes and the white on his lap is a thick blanket. He looks to the left and sees an IV line in his elbow. What the hell? He wasn't the one who got hurt, that was-- "Oh my God, Jensen. Where's Jensen? What happened to him, is he okay?" He pushes himself up on his un-tethered elbow. "I have to--just, please, you have to find out, I need to know if he's--" His chest tightens and suddenly the air around him feels too thick and heavy to breathe. "I have to know, you have to tell me, is he--"

"Jared." She taps two fingers on the bed beside him to get his attention. "I can find out what happened to your friend, but I can't do that until you calm down. You need to slow your breathing. Breathe with me. In for two and out for two."

He's heard it before, but that doesn't make it any easier. He tries to focus on her voice, nothing else. He stares at the white wall and breathes when she tells him to until she's finally satisfied.  
"His name's Jensen. Jensen Ackles. I think he got hit by lightning."

Her eyes widen. "Just a minute." She pulls back the curtain and dials a white phone mounted to the wall. He can't hear what she's saying, but the look on her face indicates it's nothing good. She steps back inside a minute later. "He was taken to the OSU Medical Center in Tulsa. That's all I can tell you."

"But was he--" Jared can't even make himself think the word, let alone say it.

The curtain swishes aside to reveal a damp-haired paramedic and a uniformed police officer. "Excuse me, but we have a few questions for the young man," says the policeman.

The nurse nods and steps back. "I'll come back and check on you later," she tells Jared, and leaves.

The paramedic steps forward. "Are you Jared?"

"Yes!" Jared sits up as far as he can. "Is Jensen okay?"

"He was airlifted from the field to the Level 3 trauma unit at OSU for triage." He takes a piece of paper out of his breast pocket and hands it to Jared. "His emergency contact gave us permission to pass along her phone number, and I believe Officer Benedict has your cell phone."

The officer--Benedict, apparently--pulls Jared's phone out of his coat pocket and passes it to him.  
"If you don't mind, we'd like to hear in your own words what happened."

Jared takes a deep breath. "We were chasing a storm. We started from Chelsea around four. When the rain got so bad we couldn't see, Jensen pulled off the road and we saw the car crashed into the tree. Jensen put up flares and I went to see who was inside. The girls seemed okay, so Jensen had me put them in his truck where they'd be out of the rain and cold." He looks down at his hands. "Then there was this bright flash of light and a huge clap of thunder that shook the car and when I turned around, Jensen was--" The word gets stuck in his throat when he tries to say it. He clears his throat. "He was on the ground, not breathing, and he didn't have a pulse. So I started CPR."

"And you probably saved his life," says the medic. "Thank goodness you were there."

Jared nods. It still doesn't quite feel real, like maybe it was all a bad dream and any minute now he'll wake up in Jensen's bed and none of this will have ever happened. "Was he--did he get struck by lightning?"

"Yes," the medic replies. "It appeared to be a direct strike. You and the two girls were close enough that you felt some of its effects indirectly."

"What do you mean?"

The medic's lips move, but Jared doesn't hear his voice. Jared frowns. "Your hearing was affected. We're speaking much louder than normal. Also, you absorbed enough current to disrupt your heart rhythm slightly, but your doctor can explain that better than I can."

"What about the kids? Are they okay?"

"They're a little shaken up, but they'll be fine," says Benedict. "They'll probably go home tonight."  
"It's fortunate that you found them when you did," adds the medic. "If they had been out there much longer, they could have developed hypothermia from the exposure, same as you."

Jared's muddled brain is still trying to process all the information when a doctor appears. "Mind if I interrupt?"

"Not at all," replies Benedict. "We were just about finished." The two nod at Jared and leave.

"You look a little overwhelmed," says the doctor.

Jared nods. "You could say that."

The doctor smiles. "I can imagine." He picks up a clipboard. "You probably have quite a few questions for me."

"I don't even know where to start," replies Jared.

"Well, let's start at the beginning," he says jovially. "I'm Doctor Fuller, and I'm overseeing your care. When you arrived, you were suffering from hypothermia, cardiac arrhythmia, a serious electrolyte imbalance, and impaired hearing and eyesight." Jared's eyes widen. "The good news is, we've successfully treated the first three, and the last two should improve on their own in the next couple of days. I'd like to keep you overnight to monitor your cardiac function, just to be sure there are no lasting effects from the electrical current."

"Okay," Jared says, still trying to digest it all. God, if he's that bad off just from indirect current, he doesn't even want to think how badly Jensen must be hurt. The thought makes his stomach churn.

The doctor sets the clipboard aside and clasps his hands together. "I know it's a lot to take in at once, and your cognitive skills aren't quite up to scratch right now. Try not to stress your brain or your body too much. Time and rest are the best medicine in this case." He steps back and pulls the curtain. "The nurse will be in to check on you shortly."

Jared unfolds the note the paramedic gave him and picks up his cell phone, turning the volume up to maximum. It's hard to make his eyes focus on the tiny numbers, but on the third try he manages to type in Sam's number correctly. He presses the green button and holds his breath.

"Hello?"

"Sam," is all he manages to get out.

"Jared, honey, is that you?" He can just barely make out the words.

"Can you talk louder?" he asks at the lowest volume he can speak and still hear himself.

"Of course," she answers. Her voice sounds hoarse and slightly nasal. Jared's breath hitches. That can't be good.

Jared swallows hard past the lump in his throat. "How is he? He's--he's not--"

"He's stable," says Sam, and Jared nearly cries with relief. "He can't really see or hear right now, and they have him on a ventilator." She pauses. "He's got real bad burns on his shoulder and foot, where the lighting hit and went out. It melted his shoe, it was so hot."

Jared twists the blanket around his finger. "That--that sounds bad."

"They don't..." There's a burst of static. "They're not sure they can save his foot."

"Oh God." Jared tries to fight back tears, but it's a losing battle. "But...they're gonna try?"

"They want to transfer him to the U of O hospital in Oklahoma City for this hyperbaric therapy," she explains. "But they need to get him breathing on his own first. God, It's like May 3rd all over again." She takes a ragged breath. "Alona's driving Jeff up to get Jensen's truck first thing tomorrow. Where are you staying?"

"The hospital," Jared answers. "In Vinita, I think. I guess when the lightning hit Jensen, some of it hit me too."

"Are you all right?" she asks immediately, and Jared feels terrible for worrying her when clearly she's got more than enough on her plate already.

"Yeah, I'll be fine," he assures her. "Give Alona my number and tell her to call when gets here."

"Sure, sure," she says, sounding distracted. "Take care of yourself, hon. I'll call you if--if anything--"

He knows she's close to breaking down. "That would be great, thanks," he cuts in.

"I'll be in touch," she promises, and hangs up.

The drive from Vinita to Oklahoma City only takes three and a half hours, but it feels like three and a half years have passed when Jared steps out of Alona's rattletrap car in the parking garage next to the main hospital. Jensen's still in the ICU, so Jared's not allowed to visit him; all he can do is look through a viewing window. Only Sam and Jeff are allowed in his room, and even they can only visit for fifteen minutes every four hours.

Once inside, Alona has to ask for directions from the front desk, since Jared's hearing has improved enough for him to hear one-on-one conversations, but the noise in the hospital lobby is too much for him. Parts of the hospital are under construction, so they have to go through a confusing maze of corridors to get to the other side of the building. The closer they get to the unit, the bigger the knot in Jared's stomach grows. When they step off the elevator into the ICU proper, Jared gets so dizzy that he has to stop and sit down on the floor. Alona helps him up and doesn't let go of his hand when they start down the hall to room 16A.

They round a corner and nearly run right into Sam, who's standing near the window but facing the opposite direction. When Alona puts a hand on her arm to get her attention, she starts and whirls around so fast that her tangled auburn hair fans out over her shoulder like a cape. "Jared," she says in a choked voice before throwing her arms around him and squeezing the breath out of him.

"How's he doing?" Jared asks when Sam finally lets him go.

Sam turns around and gestures at the window. Jared takes a step forward and looks in. The head of the exam bed is raised, which surprises Jared--he'd expected Jensen to be lying flat. There's an oxygen mask over his mouth and nose, and electrodes are attached to his forehead and chest. His left shoulder is swathed in white gauze and cotton and his foot is encased in thick white padding. IV lines snake from both arms, and his eyes are covered with white gauze circles. With so many tubes and bandages it's almost impossible to recognize him as Jensen.

"He's had 2 sessions in the hyperbaric chamber already," she replies, voice shaking. She sniffles and clears her throat. "So far he seems to be responding well. The doctors say he's--" Her voice breaks. "He's young and strong, and he's fighting."

"Of course he is," says Alona.

Jared glances over his shoulder at Sam. "Can he hear yet?"

Sam shakes her head and Jared's heart sinks. "They say it could be up to three months before his hearing and sight come back." She looks down at the floor. "If they ever do," she finishes quietly.

Jared gasps, feeling like someone just punched him in the stomach. "That long?"

Sam nods, lips pressed together in a thin line. A tear spills down one cheek, making her cover her face with one hand and turn her head away from him. Alona puts an arm around her and leads her around the corner to the lounge they passed on the way in.

Jared steps up to the window and places his hand flat against it. He's supposed to be on a plane to Pennsylvania in less than two weeks, but how can he leave Jensen now, when Jensen can't even hear him say goodbye? He hasn't even said "I love you" yet, and the thought that Jensen might never get to hear it stabs him in the chest, the pain so sharp and swift that for a second he wonders if maybe his heart is more damaged than the doctors thought. He's always thought of heartbreak as a figure of speech, but maybe it isn't--maybe his heart really is breaking in half inside his chest. Even hearing his father call him an abomination didn't hurt as badly as the idea that the Jensen he knows--the Jensen he kissed and touched and held and fell in love with--could be lost to him forever. If this is even one-tenth of the grief and despair and pain that Jensen felt after losing Chris _and_ his leg, he can't begin to imagine how Jensen could have found the strength to go on. It hasn't even been 24 hours since the strike and Jared already feels like there's a hole in his heart that can never be filled.

The next five days are excruciating. Jeff and Sam rent a room at a motel down the street from the hospital, and every night when visiting hours end at nine Jeff drives the two of them back to it. Sam's letting Jared stay with them instead of getting a room of his own, and he's all too happy to leave the responsibility of bills and keys and travel arrangements to Jeff. All they do in the room is shower and collapse into bed exhausted, anyway. At nine in the morning they go back to the hospital and drift between the lounge, viewing area, and cafeteria until it's time to leave. They eat lunch when Jensen gets his dressings changed and dinner when he goes to the hyperbaric chamber. The doctors keep him sedated to allow his body to concentrate on healing; he has no idea any of them are there, even though Sam and Jeff hold his hands and talk to him in fifteen-minute vigils every time they're allowed. Time seems to stretch and warp around them--two hours in the hospital feels like two weeks, but two hours in the motel feels like a minute.

On the sixth day, Jensen goes in for skin graft surgery on his foot. That day they sit in the surgical waiting room, which has nicer couches than the ICU lounge, and drink terrible coffee while staring at the patient tracking board on the wall. After the surgery, Jensen goes into isolation to reduce the risk of infection. For Jared there's little difference between the isolation room and the ICU; he's still stuck watching Jensen through glass. Sam and Jeff have to decontaminate and put on sterile clothing whenever they want to visit Jensen.

Four days before Jared's scheduled flight home, Jared walks up to the isolation room and nearly screams when he looks through the window and finds Jensen's glassy green eyes staring back at him. When Jensen's lips turn up in a weak but genuine smile, Jared's knees go weak and he smiles so wide his cheeks hurt. When Jensen lifts his right hand and traces a heart in the air, Jared decides there's no way in hell he's getting on a plane anytime soon.

The second Jared gets back to the motel, he boots up his laptop and finds Professor Collins's home number on the Anthro department website. He dials it with shaking fingers and holds his breath until Professor Collins answers on the third ring.

"Professor Collins? It's Jared. I need to talk to you," he says, tripping over his words a little.

"What's going on, Jared?" The professor sounds concerned.

"It's Jensen. We were out in a storm and he got hit by lightning and he's hurt really bad and I can't leave him like that so I'm definitely not going to finish the paper on time and I don't even think I'm coming back," he explains, words tumbling out in a breathless rush.

"Wait, slow down a minute. Jensen was hit by lightning?"

Jared nods, then remembers that Professor Collins can't see that. "Yeah. We were trying to help these kids who were in a car accident and it all just happened so fast, and he's really, really messed up. Like, might-lose-his-foot-and-be-permanently-deaf messed up."

"Oh my," murmurs Professor Collins. "That's truly unfortunate."

"Yeah, tell me about it," mutters Jared.

Professor Collins sighs audibly. "The problem I have, Jared, is that May term grades are due on the fifth. If you don't complete the paper and turn it in to me by 11:59 p.m. June third, I cannot give you the grade you'll need to apply to the Master's program." He pauses. "I'm afraid you have a very difficult choice to make."

Jared swallows hard. "I understand."

"I'll need to have your answer by Friday," the professor replies in a gentle voice.

"Okay," Jared agrees.

"Whatever you decide, I wish you the best of luck," says Professor Collins. "Keep me posted."

"Wait!" blurts Jared before Professor Collins can end the call. "I just wanted to say--thank you. For everything. I really appreciate it. You really..." He tries to think of a way to phrase it that doesn't make the professor sound like a pervert. "You basically changed my life. And Jensen's  
life, too."

"For the better, I hope," he replies, and Jared can hear a hint of amusement in his voice.

Jared grins. "Definitely."

Friday morning, Jensen gets out of isolation. He's moved to a room in the burn unit, and for the first time in two weeks Jared is allowed to be in the same room with him. He's not allowed to bring any gifts, like flowers or candy, but he is allowed to touch Jensen's face and hands provided he scrubs with anti-bacterial soap first. Jared's so excited he can't sleep the night before; he feels like a little kid on Christmas Eve.

Jensen's dozing when Jared walks into his room at precisely nine o'clock. Jared detours to the bathroom to wash his hands and walks over to Jensen's bed. He curls a hand around the back of Jensen's head and leans in to kiss him on the cheek.

Jensen's eyes flutter open. "Hey," he murmurs.

"Can you hear me?" he asks loudly.

Jensen winces comically and grins. "Jesus, could you keep it down? There are sick people here."

Jared feels like a ten-ton weight has just been lifted from his shoulders. He traces a finger around the shell of Jensen's ear and leans in to nip at his earlobe. He breaks into a huge grin when Jensen shivers at the touch. "I'm so happy you can hear now," he whispers. He stands up. "Because there's something I've been wanting to tell you."

Jensen's eyes light up. "Is it something good?"

"Definitely." Jared twines his fingers with Jensen's. "I should have said this before, because it almost killed me to know I could have been too late." He takes a deep breath. "I love you, Jensen."

"I love you too," says Jensen. He grins wickedly. "Now get down here and prove it."

Jared presses his lips to Jensen's for a gentle, tender kiss. "But that's not all," he whispers against Jensen's mouth. "I've decided not to go back to Pennsylvania."

"What?" Jensen frowns. "What about grad school?"

"I'm not going," answers Jared.

"You can't just--that's your whole future. You haven't thought about this enough--"

Jared leans on the side of Jensen's bed. "I've had more than enough time to think about it," he says darkly. "And I realized something. I went to college because of my parents. I majored in Anthro because of Tom. I came here because of Professor Collins. I keep letting other people dictate my life because I don't know what I want." He stands up and draws himself to his full height. "I know what I want now. I want to be with you. The rest will work itself out."

"You're serious."

Jared smiles softly. "I'm serious. I'm making the choice this time." He cups Jensen's cheek.  
"And I choose you."

"How do you know I'm worth it?" whispers Jensen.

"You're the first person who's ever made me feel like _I'm_ worth it," replies Jared. "That's awfully hard to give up."

"Jared--" Jensen sits up straighter. "Are you sure this is what you really want?"

"More than I've ever been about anything," says Jared. "This is where I'm meant to be. I know it. This is--" He swallows hard. "This is the home I've been searching for. Here, with you."

Jensen's quiet for a long moment. Finally, he looks up at Jared and a smile slowly spreads across his face. "Then I guess there's only one thing to say."

Jared's breath hitches. "What?"

"Welcome home."

[Back to Master Post](http://sinnerforhire.livejournal.com/401681.html)


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